Telugu film industry woke up to a shock this morning after M9 News broke the news that Ravi Teja and Gopichand Malineni’s film is put on hold due to viability issues.
Apparently, Digital and Hindi markets are in a slump, causing problems for the producers. With theatrical footfalls already less, they are very much worried now.
Sources say that many films are going to be impacted now.
A big-budget period film of a young hero of a big family hero and a film starring a young hero who rose to a whacky character in a youthful film in the direction of a comeback director is also on the list.
Ravi Teja and Gopichand are a crazy combination. They have delivered blockbusters like Don Seenu, Balupu, and Krack. If there are problems with their combination, it should be serious for many films, and the industry folks are worrying.
Even the films on the sets are not safe. The Hindi deal of Pawan Kalyan’s OG got canceled. One of the reasons why Family Star opted out of the Sankranthi race is that its Digital Rights have not been sold yet.
This is also the case with Hindi markets. The Channels in the North are spending more on Cricket and are exhausting budgets to buy films. The Third Parties that aggressively buy the South have also become cautious.
So, there is a scary situation in the industry all of a sudden.
A leading producer says the situation is definitely worrisome.
“The market is certainly impacted. For all our projects under production, we do not take them on sets until the Digital deals are done. So, there is no problem for us for now. We will carefully assess the conditions before taking up the upcoming projects. It looks like producers have to make films once again targeting theaters. Subsequently, everything will be restructured according to the market conditions,” He said to M9 News.
But then, this is not going to be easy. User habits do not change easily. We have seen the audience not coming to the theaters as much as they did before COVID. That is partly because of the OTT and also theaters watching becoming expensive. So, right from remunerations to production costs, ticket prices, and popcorn prices should change.
Another challenge is adapting to this change quickly.
Speaking to M9 News, People Media Factory’s TG Vishwaprasad, however, says this is a short-term impact.
“Digital is booming. This is a short-term phase. The problem is that Zee and Sony have stopped buying due to their ongoing merger. Netflix already exhausted its budget for the year. Amazon as a company is not doing well. Hotstar has no choice but to do aggressive buying since their subscriptions were impacted after they lost IPL. I think conditions will ease once Sony and Zee are back to market,” he says.
“At the same time, this disruption will make us think. We should have a Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C in place. Any change like this is a learning lesson. I believe it is a very very short interim problem I believe,” he added.
It has to be seen whether and how the industry can cope with this sudden jerk. An even bigger challenge is for producers of small films and producers who do not have running cash flows with continuous projects.
