Tees Maar Khan’s Single-Screen Woes

Exhibitors are quite hurt by the stand taken by UTV in the case of this week’s release, Tees Maar Khan. UTV, the worldwide distributors of the eagerly awaited film, did not allow single-screen cinemas to open plans on Monday, as is the norm. When the cinemas questioned UTV about why they were not being permitted to commence the advance booking four days before the date of release, they were told that UTV was keen to maintain parity between multiplexes and single-screen cinemas. While that may have been true, there seemed to be another reason too.

UTV was in negotiations with the single-screen cinemas to hike admission rates for the film. The bone of contention between the exhibitors and UTV was that the latter did not want to share anything extra with the former. This meant that although admission rates in cinemas were to be hiked by anything between 5% and 20%, the additional revenue would all go to UTV. Obviously, the cinemas weren’t agreeable to this arrangement because of which UTV may not have permitted them to open the advance booking counters. Since the terms with many of the cinemas were settled as late as on Thursday, the cinemas could open plans for ‘Tees Maar Khan‘ only on Thursday. Some cinemas didn’t even get a chance to start the advance booking and had to remain content with selling tickets in current on Friday when the film opened.