Tamil Nadu theatre owners baffled as uncertainty looms over Pongal releases

Chennai

Due to the surge in Omicron cases, the Tamil Nadu governmenton Wednesday imposed new restrictions that included night curfews (10 pm-5 am)and full lockdown on Sundays. Apart from that, theatres will operate at 50per cent occupancy until further notice. Anticipating the situation,several biggies like RRR and Radhe Shyam chose to opt-out of the January race. 

However, the makers of Valimai remained tight-lipped about their decision ofthe film's release. When we contacted veteran distributor-exhibitor and theatreowner Tirupur Subramaniam, he said, "We are not sure if Valimai willrelease on Pongal. The state government has imposed new restrictions only a fewhours ago and we haven't heard from the producer of the film, Boney Kapoor onhis decision. We will hear from him on Thursday or Friday."

Vishal Krishna too announced that his film Veeramae VaagaiSoodum is being planned to release for Pongal. "The film is complete andwe are good to release it for Pongal. We are just monitoring thesituation," Vishal Film Factory told DT Next. Radhe Shyam is said to havebeen pushed to March while RRR is speculated to have fixed a date in April forrelease