Percentage Basis For Exhibitors: Will It Really Work?

Over the last few months, there has been a lot of discussion and debit happening within the distributor and exhibitor circles in the Telugu film industry. This is primarily due to the fact that exhibitors have been calling for the implementation of percentage sharing business with regard to the exhibition.

The argument from the exhibitor is that they need a percentage in the ticket revenues, starting from the first day rather than the advance payments and booking system. But distributors are sceptical about this as they are not prepared to offer percentage basis for small and medium films.

While this conflict opens to be a rather frustrating for both the parties, there is an internal assessment that is being made, which is exposing the hard facts associated with the same.

Fundamentally speaking, it has become extremely tough to bring the audience to theatre right from the opening day. It has reached a point where the audience are simply not turning up to theatres even on the very first day of the film release.

Several films have been unable to bring even 10 tickets on opening day which reflects the situation. At this point in time, people are starting to wonder if exhibitors are really smart by asking for percentage basis system rather than advance system.

When it comes to big hero films, the audience will anyway turn up, and the distributor will also be ready to share the revenue on percentage basis. But in terms of small and medium films, this logic simply does not make any sense, and that is the reason why exhibitors are being questioned about the same.

Considering that, neither of these two parties are willing to back down at this point in time, we have to wait and see what would be the hybrid model that would come to implementation shortly.