A Day of Hope and Distress for Tollywood

Telugu Industry Biggies including Dil Raju, C Kalyan, and others had a meeting with Telangana Cinematography Minister, Talasani Srinivas Yadav this morning to discuss the exit plan for the film industry from the Lockdown. The Minister assured that the shootings may be allowed to resume from June if the cases come down drastically.

“we will only take a final decision after assessing the situation. We will also hold a meeting with the Andhra Pradesh government before taking the final decision. We are hoping that things would come control next month,” the Minister said. Telangana Cabinet will be meeting today and Chief Minister KCR will address the media after that.

Industry folks are hopeful of a statement from the Chief Minister. Meanwhile, there are reports that the Central Government is contemplating to increase Entertainment Tax on films. Earlier, the average Entertainment tax across the country used to be around 35%. Currently, in the revised, GST regime, the Tax is around 12-18% plus Local Taxes (No Local Taxes in AP and TS).

In all probability, the central government may bring back movie tickets (₹100+) into a 28% bracket. This will be a death blow to the industry which will already struggle to bring the audience to the theaters after this Pandemic. To ease the burden on the audience, the industry should absorb the additional burden which means more losses.