Another strike in Mollywood?

Malayalam film industry has been crying loud about the weaning number of viewers that come to the theatres.

Industry insiders have been attributing several theories as the reason to this. But the actual fact is that even when the whole blame is put on the inflow of other language films, there are some basic reasons that no one is really bothered about.

With the revenue from the theatres going down, the main income source has been the “satellite rights” or the money given by the TV channels.

The various channels or the groups who are buying the rights have been insisting on including maximum number of recognizable faces in the cast. As a result, many of the star studded films guaranteed some definite income while the new experiments and films with fresh faces are considered as risky propositions.

The poor maintenance of the theatres has been a cause of concern all along. State minister and actor K B Ganesh Kumar has been urging all theatre owners to have a certain standard for the theatres and now the theatres have been graded according to the facilities available.

As per the report, some of the theatres in major centres are working under pathetic conditions. Rats are running all around inside most theatres and some of the owners have found a curious way to combat this: they are using cats to kill the rats!

Unclean toilets, seats in bad condition and many more include the issues. If the report is to be implemented, many of the existing releasing centres will lose their “releasing centre tag” and more theatres will be included as wide releasing is being promoted now.

The theatre owners at the major centres are protesting against this and another strike is in the offing.

According to certain figures, only around a dozen films among the 80 odd releases this year managed to recover the investment or became profit ventures. Now it will be surprising if the trend doesn’t continue in the years to come, if the industry is continuing with the infightings and strikes.