Tollywood crisis due to Covid still on
Heavy Loss incurred by theatre owners
Many film shoots postponed
No films to show even if theatres were opened
(E. Aswani Kumar)
Hyderabad: The Tollywood continues to bleed even after Central government gave nod to open theatres across country with 50% occupancy in unlock- 5 guidelines. Date of reopening of cinema halls and multiplexes has been kept on hold by Telangana Govt. Permission to reopen will be accorded after a few days. It may take some time, perhaps till the end of October. The cinema theatres have been closed for more than six months because of Covid epidemic.
Theatre owners urge govt. to open
Film celebrities from Industry met AP CM Jagan Mohan Reddy with a request to grant permission to start film shooting in AP. They got extensive support from AP government which allotted 300 acres land for Film Industry at Vishakhapatnam. There were no further orders from the govt. Due to which the shootings had to be abandoned. Meanwhile, theatre owners who witnessed heavy loss due to the pandemic urged Telugu states governments to grant permission for the opening of theatres. They met Minister of Cinematography Thalasani Srinivas Yadav too but till now there was no green signal from him.
TV shootings and low budget film shoots started in Mid July but with the spread of Covid to the actors, Film Chamber had taken a decision to stop the shoots temporarily.
According to the govt. sources, carona virus cases may spread with the seating in closed auditorium when the cases are on the rise. The likelihood of a loss of nearly 15% to the film industry is the main worry for the producers who feel that there was no films ready to be screened even if theatres were opened right now.
Ace heroes to resume shoot
Major productions are getting geared up with the shoots with a plan to release films from January 2021. Pawan Kalyan’s “ Vakil Saheb” which was slated for release in October now moved to January 21 for Pongal and Shooting will be completed by November end. Chiranjeevi’s Acharya will resume shoot from November and release will be in next summer. Balakrishna will résumé shoot after Dussera and Allu Arjun’s PUSHPA shoot will start near Vizag by next week; Prabhas is on the way to Italy for his next film shoot. Rajamouli’s much awaited RRR in the combo of NTR and Ram Charan resumed shoot work and going up in brisk pace. All these major films will be screened in theaters in 2021 and fans has to wait few more months to view their hero on big screen.
Courtesy of Film Celebrities
Top celebrities of film industry have reduced their remunerations for the sake of Tollywood producers who were in huge loss as the shoot was not completed in expected time. Mahesh babu and Pawan Kalyan stood first in this aspect and gave extra dates for the producers to work on the pending projects.
Central Govt’s Unlock – 5 guidelines norms include that temperature inside theatre should be around 24 degrees with social distancing and hand sanitization during interval period which is a difficult task for theatre owners to maintain at the slab rate of ticket price. Hope Tollywood will come out of this crisis with a bang.
