Tollywood's Summer: Audience Preferring Shopping Malls

While the lack of content-led cinema is already making audiences stay away from theatres in Telugu states, a new trouble has now stepped in. That used to be an issue earlier, too; now that the cinema being offered is not at all entertaining for many folks, they are seeing this issue through a magnifying glass. And that’s none other than the situation of single screens, mostly.

A well-equipped theatre like Vimal Cinemas in Hyderabad, which is being operated by the popular production house Mythri Movie Makers, has recently faced massive complaints about the air-conditioners not working. Usually, to save power bills, theatre owners used to turn off A/Cs toward the climax of the film. Looks like even Vimal Cinemas is also using the old strategy of toning down the air-conditioning in the same way.

The same situation erupted the other day at Parvathipuram Sri Cinemas when the theatre management stopped the A/Cs midway. The audience even got into a tussle with the management for not providing the air-conditioner on a mid-Summer day. Gone are the days when audiences used to go to theatres for a neat 2-3 hours to experience air-conditioning. Theatres at RTC X roads and now non-existing cinemas like Sangeeth and Anand used to be popular for their A/C only. But now, many such A/C fans are turning towards shopping malls, as there will be continuous A/C at malls without any disruption.

A good sign is that, if the monsoon hits on time, surely Peddi will be opening on June 4th to some early showers. That will reduce the temperature for sure, and A/C might not be an issue then. But otherwise, theatre owners have to plan their A/C maintenance well in advance, to make sure fans won’t get disappointed.