It’s now Dhanush’s turn to face distributors’ ire

Last year, the distributors and theatre-owners went up in arms against actor Vijay asking him to repay them for the losses suffered in distributing and releasing some of his films. The same thing, though not exactly on the same lines, appears to be occurring now to actor Dhanush who now faces the heat from the distributors.

An official of the Association of Theatre Owners of Tamil Nadu says, “Dhanush has had successive failures in ‘Uthamaputhiran’, ‘Aadukalam’, ‘Seedan’ and ‘Maappillai’. Though these films were made to look ‘big films’ by a particular regional channel, they were losing prepositions as far as distributors and theatre-owners are concerned.

“Dhanush, therefore, has to reduce his fee from his present fee of Rs.8.5 crore per film. The issue of higher fee paid to Dhanush and a few more actors would be discussed threadbare at our meeting to be held in Rameswaram on 10th August. We would request them to reduce their fees on their own. The film industry on the whole can continue to flourish only if the production cost is reduced on the part of producers.

“Only if the heroes reduce their fees, the production cost would be cut down to a large extent. All concerned with the film like distributors, theatre-owner and advertiser can earn some money in this regard. We would surely attempt to pay a full-stop to heroes demanding and getting more money per film than they actually deserve,” he concluded.

Kalaipuli Sekaran too endorsed this view. “Films which were publicized sky-high bit the dust in reality, which only we (theatre-owners and distributors) are aware of. These films caused us loss to a huge extent,” he said, naming neither the films nor the actors.