Tripartite talks successful: Tamil Nadu film strike ends, shooting to resume today

CHENNAI: The strike that had paralysed the Tamil cinema industry from March 1 has finally come to an end with the tripartite talks between the Tamil Film Producers Council, Digital Service Providers and the Tamil Nadu Theatre Owners Association, in the presence of ministers Kadambur Raju and K C Veeramani, on Tuesday yielding positive results. With no Tamil films getting released from March 1, there are over 45 films awaiting release, and with production having been stopped completely from March 16, tens of thousands of people have been out of work, and over a thousand screens in the state have had no new Tamil content during this time. 

Shooting will resume from Wednesday. A producers’ panel will be formed to regulate release of films in a backlog. Details of this will be announced Wednesday, TFPC treasurer SR Prabhu said.
According to Vishal, president, TFPC, most of the producers’ demands had been agreed to, including computerised ticketing and box office transparency, flexible ticket pricing, and significant reduction in online booking charges. 

He said that TFPC would also start its own portal for online booking of tickets. The breakthroughs include reduction of DSP charges as follows: E Cinema, which charged over Rs 10,000, will charge Rs 5,000, while the one-time VPF (Virtual Print Fee) charged for a film’s lifetime run, earlier charged at over Rs 20,000, will come down to Rs 10,000.“In six months, we have been asked by the TN government to come up with a permanent solution for VPF,” Prabhu said.

“Comprehensive computerised ticketing will finally be a reality, and the government will pass a Government Order on that within next 60 days. Similarly, we have got the go-ahead for flexible ticket pricing. Since `150 is the maximum allowed ticket price, theatres will charge differentially for small (`50, `75, `100) and big films (`100, `125, `150),” Tirupur Subramaniam, distributor and head of the Joint Action Committee, revealed.