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.
Needless to add, any producer, distributor or exhibitor would be only too happy to see tickets of his film selling in advance. But UTV’s move not only precluded exhibitors from selling tickets in advance but it also created the wrong impression in the public’s mind. Said Pramod Munot,owner of Panch-Sheel cinema of Nagpur, “We were unable to start the advance booking of ‘Tees Maar Khan‘ because of UTV’s stand. This move went against the film because the public coming to watch the film at our cinema on Friday was shocked to see tickets openly available. This gave them the impression that the film was bad because the advance booking at our cinema is usually very good.”
Harish Lakhani, the CEO of Rajhans group of cinemas in Gujarat, spat fire against the UTV move. “UTV has no right to refrain exhibitors from opening plans after it has confirmed the film at their cinemas,” he thundered. “This is nonsense,” he added. According to Munot, “The terms should have been finalised much earlier. Why hold the film and the exhibitor to ransom?” UTV’s Siddharth Roy Kapur, however, said, “We avoided opening plans on Monday because the negative word spreads quite fast if, for some reason, the advance sale of tickets isn’t very good on Monday/Tuesday.We didn’t want that to happen.”
