Mumbai: This might be Bollywood's biggest crisis yet. With all attempts to reach an amicable solution to the profit sharing issue between producers and exhibitors having reached a deadlock, April onwards there will be no new releases at any of the multiplex chains across the country.
"This time the producers have decided that we have to be together for our survival or we will extinct ourselves,” says Chairman of Producers Association, Mukesh Bhatt.
The United Producers Forum on Monday demanded a flat 50-50 revenue share between producers and exhibitors for all films, be it a small budget or a big budget film - independent of the star cast.
Apart from an unequal share of the revenue, the producers are also protesting against the exhibitor's policy of having no uniform profit sharing model for the films.
Exhibitors currently change their revenue sharing ratio from film to film according to their own grading system.
"We have had many rounds of discussion with them we are hoping it reaches a conclusion soon. The fact that we had to come to the media is that we have exhausted all the means of all the one to one dialogue. We think its important to get the message out. We are asking for our fair share. We dont want more than 50 per cent but we don’t believe that we should be getting less than 50 per cent,” says CEO UTV Motion Pictures, Siddharth Roy Kapur.
CEO of The Indian Film Company, Bhargava, "The issues has been going on since a year now. They classify our movies as medium, average, small and big from time to time”.
Not everyday do film producers like Mahesh Bhatt and Yash Chopra get together on one panel. Now that they have managed to corner the multiplexes, the ball is now in the exhibitors court. If the strike starts, it will be a losing situation for both parties.
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