Yesterday the film exhibitors federation of Kerala had announced a theater strike by closing all the theaters under the federation as a protest against the piracy that kills cinema and this strike was specifically to support Premam which has become a victim of piracy recently. The exhibitors federation president Liberty Basheer said so while announcing the strike today. But is this strike going to be good or is it going to be bad for our industry..? Is there any other motive behind this other than to support Premam..?There is a lot of questions to be answered to the public about this strike.
As far as we are concerned this strike in unnecessary and rubbish. They are saying that they are doing this to support premam in this Ant-Piracy movement. But in fact they are killing premam with their strike. The main issue in this case is that due to the spreading of pirated prints people stop going to theaters for watching the film and pirated prints are spreading each day. But if the theater itself is closed in the name of strike then how people watch the film from theater and they can’t be blamed if they go for a pirated print to watch the film. There is also another issue. Premam had lost a majority of his gettable gross collection due to piracy and the drop in collection so huge as well. If theater strike happens it will lose even that small collection which it is getting from theaters now.
Another reason for this strike is strictly personal and they are using association or organization to obtain their personal goal. The wide release is always a good thing for films as it reduces the chance of big loss for a film and also can be used as a prevention against piracy. If the film is released in the maximum number of theaters, then it can reach to more people and there by resorting to pirated prints can be decreased. But the exhibitors federation does not want this as it can decrease their huge shares of profit.
So to maximize and sustain their profit they are going against wide release and this strike is using as a weapon against the associations of producers and distributors who decided to go for wide release from the coming Friday. The exhibitors federation threatens the theaters under exhibitors association and their strike is just to block the wide release of the film Baahubali which is releasing on this Friday.
This theater strike is just a mask to cover up the dirty intentions of the exhibitors federation lead by Liberty Basheer and Anwar Rasheed’s name and his film Premam is used by them to cover up their other selfish gains by this strike. This is for worse and it is this which really kills cinema than piracy.
