Scrap tax or will shut theatres from March: Owners

With the government charging eight per cent tax in addition to the GST, theatre owners have been demanding to revoke the entertainment tax in order to reduce the price of tickets and attract more crowd.“Also, if films starring top heroes flop, the actors should compensate the losses. If not, then it has been decided not to screen their films in theatres until they compensate the loss incurred by theatre owners, producers and distributors,” said Sakthi Subramaniam, president of Coimbatore, Tirupur, Erode and the Nilgiris Theatre Owners’ Association.

Decisions to this effect were made at a meeting here by theatre owners. It was also decided that the producer should not release a film in digital platforms like Amazon and Netflix.

Further, Subramaniam said that hundreds of theatres shut down after being unable to continue in the business. “From nearly 4000 theatres, Tamil Nadu now has only 900 theatres. Even among them, only around 200 are running profitably. Similarly, distributors have also reduced drastically, from over 1000 to just around 20 distributors now. Let the actors get even Rs 100 crore as salary, but they should come forth to share the loss in case the film flops,” he said.