It's an unexpected plot twist. The Maharashtra government’s proposed protectionist policy for Marathi cinema comes at a time when more films are being made in the language and they are making more money than ever before.
State Culture Minister Vinod Tawde told the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday that the government was in the process of changing the licencing conditions for multiplexes to make it mandatory for them to reserve the 6 pm-9 pm slot on at least one screen for Marathi films. The proposal will have to go through a great deal of paperwork before it is actually implemented, but some things are already clear. For one, the Bharatiya Janata Party wants to steal the thunder from its junior coalition partner, the Shiv Sena, as also the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, which have long been pressurising multiplexes to exhibit more Marathi movies.
Marathi has a rich filmmaking tradition that began in 1932, but Marathi filmmakers have never been able to shake off the feeling that their cinema has third-rung status in the Maharashtrian capital: in addition to being the home of the Hindi film industry, Mumbai also enjoys watching Hollywood films. Theatre owners in Mumbai as well as other major Maharashtrian cities such as Nagpur and Kolhapur show a marked preference for Hindi releases, especially in the lucrative prime-time evening slots. Marathi films are usually shown in morning or afternoon slots, except when they are big-ticket productions. Whenever a Bollywood or Hollywood juggernaut hits the screen, it is widely understood that Marathi releases must change their release dates if they need to make reasonable returns.
But in the past two or three years, enough has changed for Marathi film producers and distributors to clamour for a new order. An increase in the number of Marathi releases, and big hits such as as Duniyadari, Lai Bhaari and Timepass, have resulted in more Marathi films making demands on a fixed number of screens. “We used to make around 60-70 films a year, but now we are producing close to 250 films,” said Vijay Patkar, actor and president of the Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Chitrapat Mahamandal. “We have been telling the government for years that we need proper shows and proper theatres. The lack of showcasing is a common complaint among our 21,000 members.”
Everyone agrees that the quality of Marathi films has improved. “There is a variety and richness in Marathi cinema that is simply not there in Hindi,” said Sanjay Chhabria, whose Everest Films recently distributed Happy Journey. Despite this, he said, "the numbers remain relatively small". Satellite channels such as Zee Marathi and Star Pravah do not purchase more than 20-30 films a year. This means that the pressure to recover productions costs ‒ usually in the range of Rs 2 crore-Rs 3 crore ‒ from the box office gets even greater.
The time is right
Several directors and distributors of Marathi films hope that the government’s announcement will boost their revenue prospects and help them reach audiences alienated by the inconvenient timings. “I have been waiting for this for a long, long time,” said leading director Ravi Jadhav, whose Timepass 2 opens on May 1. It is the sequel to the monster hit Timepass. “Marathi films have been doing very well in the last two-three years, and some have crossed the Rs 35-crore box office mark”, which is considered a hit in the more modestly budgeted Marathi film industry, he said. “Business has been healthy, but the issue of being forced to take morning or afternoon shows over prime slots remains,” Jadhav added. “Marathi films now have a fair chance to compete with other films.”
That said, successful directors like Jadhav actually have enough clout to negotiate better slots in multiplexes. If it becomes a reality, Tawde's proposal will be most beneficial for films with modest budgets, which suffer enormously if they are denied proper showcases, said Vivek Kajaria, producer of Fandry and the upcoming Siddhanth. “Seventy five percent of our revenue is being generated from multiplexes,” he said. “My average occupancy goes down if I don’t get proper show timings.”
Despite experiencing a “resurgence in content” in recent years, Marathi cinema is facing significant challenges, said Nikhil Sane, Business Head, Film Division, at Essel Vision Pvt Ltd, a leading producer and distributor of Marathi films through its Zee label. “Bollywood and Hollywood dominate and come with huge muscle and star power,” said Sane, who will distribute Timepass 2. “They have a national reach through television networks and huge back-end support. It becomes very difficult for Marathi directors to compete at a concept level.”
Taking on Bollywood
However, some distributors and filmmakers believe that a great deal depends on the movie itself: if it has no legs, it will not get footfalls, even if the government were to block every available show in every movie theatre in the state. “I release a Marathi movie every week, and I have never faced any problems in getting slots,” said leading distributor Rahul Haksar, who most recently released the urban romance Barach Kahi and Coffee. “On the contrary, I prefer to show films in the afternoon, which is when women and families come. What is going to happen with films that are not good and nobody wants to watch? This is a problem across languages and has nothing to do with Marathi.”
Others believe that that the proposed legislation might not actually help Marathi cinema in the long term, and that quality could take a hit. “I have mixed feelings about the decision,” said producer Suhrud Godbole, whose superhero-themed Baji opened in February. “We know for a fact that a Marathi film get steam-rolled even if it doing well and a big-ticket Hindi movie comes along, but does making it mandatory solve anything? It is our responsibility to make films that people want to watch. We should not promote mediocre Marathi films under the garb of promoting them. We shouldn’t play victims but show our spine and fight it out through our content.”
A better solution, suggested Deool director Umesh Kulkarnii, might be to create smaller theatres across the state that are dedicated to showing Marathi films, especially in cities and towns that have little access to cinemas. The Maharashtra government already supports Marathi filmmakers by giving them production grants and regularly waiving entertainment tax on socially relevant productions. Despite this, distribution is key to any producer's economics. “The problem is that in theatres, the whole business is about the opening weekend, and if people don’t come to the cinemas within the first three days, multiplexes remove the film,” Kulkarni said. “Many Marathi films run on word-of-mouth publicity, but today’s system doesn’t allow that to happen.”
Mind your language
Unlike the Tamil or Telugu film industries, which have sizeable markets among their diasporas, Marathi cinema is shown mostly in Maharashtra. If Marathi films do travel, it is to places that have had historical ties with Maharashtrian culture, such as Belgaum in Karnataka, Goa, Madhya Pradesh and parts of Gujarat. A few foreign markets have now opened up in Auckland in New Zealand and Singapore, director Ravi Jadhav said. Yet, Mumbai remains the most lucrative market for Marathi filmmakers.
In the overall scheme of things, Tawde's proposal isn't unusual. Regional protectionism is not the preserve of the BJP or the Shiv Sena, pointed out veteran producer Amit Khanna. “It has nothing to do with the Hindu right, but the political right,” Khanna said. “Several states have tried this before, especially in the South.” Across the country, pressure groups representing distributors and producers ensure that local cinema chains promote local films over Bollywood and Hollywood.
However, Khanna doesn’t think the proposal will work. “By reserving shows, you cannot push people inside the cinemas,” he said. “The logical thing for the state government to do would be to promote the local film industry through incentives.”
When Khanna was the chairperson of Reliance Entertainment, the company had successfully challenged legal cases attempting to block the Telugu-dubbed version of Mani Ratnam’s Raavanan from being screened in Karnataka by people claiming that it would harm local Kannada cinema. “Somebody is bound to challenge the [Maharashtra] government in court,” Khanna said. “Multiplexes in urban areas are very expensive and are mostly running into losses. By being restrictive, you cannot push growth and development.”
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State Culture Minister Vinod Tawde told the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday that the government was in the process of changing the licencing conditions for multiplexes to make it mandatory for them to reserve the 6 pm-9 pm slot on at least one screen for Marathi films. The proposal will have to go through a great deal of paperwork before it is actually implemented, but some things are already clear. For one, the Bharatiya Janata Party wants to steal the thunder from its junior coalition partner, the Shiv Sena, as also the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, which have long been pressurising multiplexes to exhibit more Marathi movies.
Marathi has a rich filmmaking tradition that began in 1932, but Marathi filmmakers have never been able to shake off the feeling that their cinema has third-rung status in the Maharashtrian capital: in addition to being the home of the Hindi film industry, Mumbai also enjoys watching Hollywood films. Theatre owners in Mumbai as well as other major Maharashtrian cities such as Nagpur and Kolhapur show a marked preference for Hindi releases, especially in the lucrative prime-time evening slots. Marathi films are usually shown in morning or afternoon slots, except when they are big-ticket productions. Whenever a Bollywood or Hollywood juggernaut hits the screen, it is widely understood that Marathi releases must change their release dates if they need to make reasonable returns.
But in the past two or three years, enough has changed for Marathi film producers and distributors to clamour for a new order. An increase in the number of Marathi releases, and big hits such as as Duniyadari, Lai Bhaari and Timepass, have resulted in more Marathi films making demands on a fixed number of screens. “We used to make around 60-70 films a year, but now we are producing close to 250 films,” said Vijay Patkar, actor and president of the Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Chitrapat Mahamandal. “We have been telling the government for years that we need proper shows and proper theatres. The lack of showcasing is a common complaint among our 21,000 members.”
Everyone agrees that the quality of Marathi films has improved. “There is a variety and richness in Marathi cinema that is simply not there in Hindi,” said Sanjay Chhabria, whose Everest Films recently distributed Happy Journey. Despite this, he said, "the numbers remain relatively small". Satellite channels such as Zee Marathi and Star Pravah do not purchase more than 20-30 films a year. This means that the pressure to recover productions costs ‒ usually in the range of Rs 2 crore-Rs 3 crore ‒ from the box office gets even greater.
The time is right
Several directors and distributors of Marathi films hope that the government’s announcement will boost their revenue prospects and help them reach audiences alienated by the inconvenient timings. “I have been waiting for this for a long, long time,” said leading director Ravi Jadhav, whose Timepass 2 opens on May 1. It is the sequel to the monster hit Timepass. “Marathi films have been doing very well in the last two-three years, and some have crossed the Rs 35-crore box office mark”, which is considered a hit in the more modestly budgeted Marathi film industry, he said. “Business has been healthy, but the issue of being forced to take morning or afternoon shows over prime slots remains,” Jadhav added. “Marathi films now have a fair chance to compete with other films.”
That said, successful directors like Jadhav actually have enough clout to negotiate better slots in multiplexes. If it becomes a reality, Tawde's proposal will be most beneficial for films with modest budgets, which suffer enormously if they are denied proper showcases, said Vivek Kajaria, producer of Fandry and the upcoming Siddhanth. “Seventy five percent of our revenue is being generated from multiplexes,” he said. “My average occupancy goes down if I don’t get proper show timings.”
Despite experiencing a “resurgence in content” in recent years, Marathi cinema is facing significant challenges, said Nikhil Sane, Business Head, Film Division, at Essel Vision Pvt Ltd, a leading producer and distributor of Marathi films through its Zee label. “Bollywood and Hollywood dominate and come with huge muscle and star power,” said Sane, who will distribute Timepass 2. “They have a national reach through television networks and huge back-end support. It becomes very difficult for Marathi directors to compete at a concept level.”
Taking on Bollywood
However, some distributors and filmmakers believe that a great deal depends on the movie itself: if it has no legs, it will not get footfalls, even if the government were to block every available show in every movie theatre in the state. “I release a Marathi movie every week, and I have never faced any problems in getting slots,” said leading distributor Rahul Haksar, who most recently released the urban romance Barach Kahi and Coffee. “On the contrary, I prefer to show films in the afternoon, which is when women and families come. What is going to happen with films that are not good and nobody wants to watch? This is a problem across languages and has nothing to do with Marathi.”
Others believe that that the proposed legislation might not actually help Marathi cinema in the long term, and that quality could take a hit. “I have mixed feelings about the decision,” said producer Suhrud Godbole, whose superhero-themed Baji opened in February. “We know for a fact that a Marathi film get steam-rolled even if it doing well and a big-ticket Hindi movie comes along, but does making it mandatory solve anything? It is our responsibility to make films that people want to watch. We should not promote mediocre Marathi films under the garb of promoting them. We shouldn’t play victims but show our spine and fight it out through our content.”
A better solution, suggested Deool director Umesh Kulkarnii, might be to create smaller theatres across the state that are dedicated to showing Marathi films, especially in cities and towns that have little access to cinemas. The Maharashtra government already supports Marathi filmmakers by giving them production grants and regularly waiving entertainment tax on socially relevant productions. Despite this, distribution is key to any producer's economics. “The problem is that in theatres, the whole business is about the opening weekend, and if people don’t come to the cinemas within the first three days, multiplexes remove the film,” Kulkarni said. “Many Marathi films run on word-of-mouth publicity, but today’s system doesn’t allow that to happen.”
Mind your language
Unlike the Tamil or Telugu film industries, which have sizeable markets among their diasporas, Marathi cinema is shown mostly in Maharashtra. If Marathi films do travel, it is to places that have had historical ties with Maharashtrian culture, such as Belgaum in Karnataka, Goa, Madhya Pradesh and parts of Gujarat. A few foreign markets have now opened up in Auckland in New Zealand and Singapore, director Ravi Jadhav said. Yet, Mumbai remains the most lucrative market for Marathi filmmakers.
In the overall scheme of things, Tawde's proposal isn't unusual. Regional protectionism is not the preserve of the BJP or the Shiv Sena, pointed out veteran producer Amit Khanna. “It has nothing to do with the Hindu right, but the political right,” Khanna said. “Several states have tried this before, especially in the South.” Across the country, pressure groups representing distributors and producers ensure that local cinema chains promote local films over Bollywood and Hollywood.
However, Khanna doesn’t think the proposal will work. “By reserving shows, you cannot push people inside the cinemas,” he said. “The logical thing for the state government to do would be to promote the local film industry through incentives.”
When Khanna was the chairperson of Reliance Entertainment, the company had successfully challenged legal cases attempting to block the Telugu-dubbed version of Mani Ratnam’s Raavanan from being screened in Karnataka by people claiming that it would harm local Kannada cinema. “Somebody is bound to challenge the [Maharashtra] government in court,” Khanna said. “Multiplexes in urban areas are very expensive and are mostly running into losses. By being restrictive, you cannot push growth and development.”
