Corporatisation of the film industry is not all that rosy as it is projected to be. Family-run film production houses in south India are still hesitant to corporatise even though they concede that it is inevitable. The 50-year-old Prasad Group, which covers most areas of the movie business, is not yet prepared to corporatise.
A Ramesh, director, Prasad Group, says, when time comes, the inevitable will happen. Prasad has not yet felt the need to corporatise its business, he adds. Normally, funding requirements compel production houses to corporatise.
However, established production companies have not felt the need to corporatise so far because funding has never been a problem, says SC Babu, chief executive officer, AVM Productions/AVM Studios. The credibility of the organisations has always convinced bankers, he adds.
?Corporates are massively acquiring screens and hence tend to control the extent of consumption of movies. We?ll only have to wait and watch.?
Moreover, film distribution is in a turmoil, he says. A movie’s success is purely dependent on the distributors’ discretion, which is mostly based on the star value of a film. Kalaipuli G Sekaran, president, Chennai-Kanchipuram-Thiruvallur Distributors? Assocation, justifies the strategy.
?It is a blame game. Distributors are used as scapegoats. When audiences do not come to theatres to watch films, what can distributors do? Nobody can predict the success of a movie.?
Right now, multiplexes are in the process of taking over single screens. They are more transparent in doing business, Babu says. Multiplexes will soon overtake single screens and this expected to lessen the problems with retail distribution, he asserts.
Corporates are widening their reach to cover the whole spectrum of the movie making business. The forward and backward integration strategy gives them an upper hand compared to the family-run businesses.