47-day strike outcome: Qube agrees to cut costs

While neither of the demands from tripartite was met, Producers’ Council claim that they will still profit from the outcome. Qube, however, said that they would incur huge losses. 

The issue came to an end on Tuesday, after the Minister of Information and Broadcating, Kadambur Raju intervened. The 10-hour marathon meeting was attended by producers, theatre owners and DSPs. 

While TFPC decided to call off the strike claiming that their demands are met, earlier in an interview Vishal Krishna, the president of the association had told DT Next that the strike would not end till the producers are asked to stop paying the Virtual Print Fee (VPF) by DSPs. But, the rates have been slashed by over 50 per cent after the meeting. 

“We have cut down the rates of D-Cinema licence from Rs 22,000 to Rs 10,000 and E-cinema rates from Rs 9000 to Rs 5,000. Our business will be at loss because of this. Nevertheless, we agreed to these norms and will run the show,” said Senthil Kumar, the co-founder of Qube. 

Vishal, however, said that they have succeeded in their efforts. “We have brought down the price of D-Cinema by over 50 per cent, which is a huge success,” he said. 

“Apart from Qube, we will have new digital players like Aerox and K Sera Sera soon. I believe, Mercury would be the first film to release with different projectors in Tamil cinema. Moreover, this will also put an end to monopoly. Not only on the DSP front, from now on, there will be no monopoly in any facets of Kollywood,” added Vishal. 

Office bearer of the distributors’ association and theatre owner, Tirupur Subramaniam, who operates the largest number of screens in Tamil Nadu said, “We are happy with the outcome. All we wanted is that the strike to get over and the industry to get back to normalcy.” 

He added, “We will start with new service providers for the next six months in a trial and error method. If things are smooth, we will continue with their services or else we will install Qube again.”