Allu Arjun's Pushpa Movie Is Yet To Get The Break-Even In Andhra Pradesh: Is The Ticket Pricing Issue Affecting The Collections?

It is already known that the Andhra Pradesh government's decision on ticket prices in the theatres made the theatres partly shut down, now it is also affecting the collections of the big movies. For example, Tollywood's ace actor Allu Arjun's 'Pushpa: The Rise' movie was released on 17th December, 2021 but till now, the movie didn't even get the break-even when it comes to the collections in AP.

Going with the prices, the government decided to go with a minimum ticket price set between Rs 75 and Rs 250 in AC theatres that too in municipal corporation areas and in non-AC theatres the prices range from Rs 20 to Rs 100. Especially in gram panchayat areas, the tickets were set as low as Rs 5. This is a big blow to the industry as the production costs increased these days and even the Covid-19 pandemic also gave huge losses to the film industry.

Speaking about Pushpa movie's collection, the first day it collected Rs 35 crore in Andhra Pradesh and Rs 25 crores was the distributor's share in this amount. But the amount was expected to be much more than this… With this, we can say the low-ticket pricing is affecting the cinema business.

In reality, the distributors actually pay the advance to the producers and commit to settle the total amount just a couple of days ahead of the release after solving their theatre release issue. Sometimes, they also take advance from theatres and settle the amount to producers hoping to get profits after the release. But now, theatre owners are not willing to pay advance to the distributors.

Well, Tollywood's ace producer Sravanthi Ravi Kishore also shared his opinion on this issue and said, "I think we must have two-part pricing. One for admission to the theatre and the other for what movie you are watching. The ticket price should vary based on the budget of a movie. You can't travel in the first-class compartment of the train with a general compartment ticket".

Even GVN Babu, the secretary of Andhra Pradesh State Cine Exhibitors Association, spoke to the media and said, "We have been experiencing heavy losses due to the low cap on ticket prices and raids by officials. If it continues like this, it will be difficult to run the single screen theatres".

He also added, "The central government allotted the industry status to the entertainment sector a long time ago and had directed the state government to change the electricity tariffs accordingly during Vijay Bhaskar Reddy's (former CM of united Andhra Pradesh) administration. He had issued a GO (government order) on the same, but it was not implemented. And it is the primary reason for our financial woes. Also, there was no increase in ticket prices in the last 20 years. Our expenditures are increasing day-by-day due to advancements in technology, labour charges, salaries and so on. But, the government hasn't done much to support us. Sometimes, the average occupancy per month in an AC theatre in Grama Panchayats may go below 10 per cent. For AC theatres we want a ticket on the high end seating to cost a minimum of Rs 100 and a minimum of Rs 40 on the lower end seating, plus maintenance charges and GST. Earlier, we requested (the government) to increase the maintenance charges from Rs 3 to Rs 10. Apart from that, there is a lot of confusion due to the lack of clarity over the inclusion of GST in the ticket prices. As per the central government order, GST has to be collected separately over the ticket charges".