Enkayaar, Bollywood Trade News Network

Movie viewing has surely become a big business and it can mar or create fortunes of the political kinds. This is manifest from the fact that the State Government of Tamil Nadu has decided that the upper ceiling for the movie tickets is going to be Rs. Fifty only.

For a state that is crazy about movies this move is going to create a new class of followers for the ruling party, but what effect would this step have on the industry at the national level and in the adjoining states as well? One thing is for sure that the neighboring Southern states may grudgingly follow into the footsteps of the initiating state, but can Mumbai Film Industry also accept this kind of a diktat.

As it is, it does not seem to be a likely thing that would be accepted by meek submission. With the infrastructure costs shooting the sky, and enticing the movie grower by value additions, which though is jacked out from the pocket of the movie goers, accepting a unilateral cut in the rates by a political diktat may be met with a resistance.

But one does not know, with elections round the corner, somebody may put this rabbit out of the back, and apart from opening the movie viewing to a new class of viewers who now have to think twice before stepping into the cinema hall, could get a new brand of converts for a political ideology.

But this move also has a flip side as cutting down the rates of the film tickets, and bringing them on par with the pirated CD rates that are sounding the death knell for the industry it could become a game of numbers, where the increase in the footfall of the audience could compensate for the perceived loss of revenue. After all the movies can run and become remunerative only when more and more number of moviegoers view it, just the multiplex audience cannot sustain the business of movie making on a pan India basis.

It is a move that is radical in the same manner as had been done by the makers of Ultra Videos who to stem the tide of pirated video CD business started selling the original CDs at the price at which the pirated ones are being sold. And this move was able to make an impact.

As it is, differential price structure is adopted by the theatre owners, in a scaled and phased manner, so the film owners could take a leaf from this event and do a rethink on their pricing structure which would be beneficial for everybody in the long run.