DISTRIBUTOR SAKTHIVELAN INTERVIEW

“The crucial part of a movie is distribution. Inspite of a great script, narration and star cast, the business of the film is what really matters. Having said all this, we decided on having a distribution company that will handle the distribution of a film throughout the state. Though 2-3 similar distribution companies existed, they sold the rights of few minor areas to local distributors. This made us arrive at a decision to start up an organised distribution company for the state of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Eventually we went out to set up 12 centres with proper office administration facilities throughout the state to execute this plan. This is how a proper distribution network like Dream Factory started!”

“Due to high production cost and the trend of wide release, individual distributors started reducing in the industry. Few years back, a distributor was able to purchase the rights of a film worth 1 crore with just 20 lakhs as the initial investment. Gradually, this became impossible due to the reduction of deposit amount from theatres, and the swing of direct release began. This threatened the future of many small films, and that is when a group of producers like CV Kumar, Abinesh, Elred Kumar, Sashikanth with similar thought processes came together with K.E.Gnanavel Raja to establish a firm of this kind. The mystery of releasing a Tamil film was unlocked by our company.”

"Initially, a film used to hold 5 to 6 prints maximum as the cost of one print used to be 50,000. A theatre would get an individual print only if it could collect more than 50,000. After digitisation, the cost of one print is just 10,000 and a theatre that can collect up to 15,000 itself gets an individual copy. This is both a boon and bane to the business of a film as it leads to the loss of release strategy and prior planning."

"A person comes to a cinema hall to have a good movie viewing experience. This experience can be enriching only when the visibility, seating and ambience are good. Screens in rural regions should rework on their facilities, and elevate their standards. In future, we would like to take up small theatres, renovate them and make the movie watching experience better for the people in rural areas too."

"Every movie has a different marketing strategy. Innovations in this area are vital as flat mundane marketing falls short in results."