Buyers of hit films groans silently - TeluguPeople.com News

In recent times, Tollywood has witnessed a strange case where films have been declared super hits, but the distributors are losing money. Although, the theaters have witnessed good openings, they have failed to sustain the momentum leading to losses for the buyers especially in the case of big ticket films.

What is making movies lose money inspite of them doing so well on box office? The single reason for this debacle can be attributed to the skyrocketing budgets of the big movies, which is not on par with the market values of the respective heroes.

For example, let us consider a certain hero X, who has a market value of, say Rs 20 crore. This means that this particular hero's movie, if successful has the ability to garner market share of Rs 20 crore, given his fan base and image in the market.

To go over and beyond this mark would require an extraordinary script or film which is rarely the case. So, what happens when a film of this hero is made on a budget of around Rs 20-25 crore, packaged with a lot of publicity and hype and then succumbing to the market frenzy, buyers lap it up for around Rs 30 crore?

In all likelihood, if the movie garners positive reviews, they still end up with Rs 20 crore, leading to a deficit of around Rs 10 crore.

Ideally, for the buyers to be making a profit, it is imperative that filmmakers complete a film strictly within the market value of their hero and leave the buyer with enough of a margin to recover their investments.

But that is rarely the case! With the remuneration of the top heroes and directors touching the eight and even nine figure mark, this seems unlikely to happen in the near future as well.

A recent example is that of Venkatesh starrer, Shadow! The movie was made on a budget of approximately Rs 35-40 crore. Putting aside the fate of the film at the box-office, it was clear that buyers straightaway would have made a table-loss, for Venkatesh no longer commands that kind of a market value.

One option for buyers is to purchase the film on a profit-share basis. But that rarely happens with big films and prominent buyers are also worried that if they decline a certain offer from a top producer or director, they would not be given the rights to their subsequent films.

The rights to Prabhas starrer, Billa were bought for around Rs 2 crore only for the Vizag area. Another Prabhas movie, Rebel was in the news when the producers filed a complaint against the director, Raghava Lawrence.

Lawrence had reportedly promised to make the film on a budget of Rs 22 crore and the movie finally ended up at around Rs 40 plus crore. The same was the case with Ram Charan starrer, Orange.

Speaking on the phenomenon, Tollywood writer, Kona Venkat says, 'The only way out for a win-win situation is to keep the budgets under control. This is there in Bollywood, but yet to take root in Tollywood.

As long as producers cater to the ego of their heroes or for whatever reason, allow the budget of their film to go beyond their hero's market value, they are putting either themselves or their buyers in a predicament.

While the seasoned buyers might not fall prey, there are always newcomers entering the business without any idea of these things. A complete awareness of the market dynamics is a must.'