The dispute between Bollywood producers and Indian multiplexes over revenue sharing hardened this week, with no end in sight to the monthlong boycott of new releases.
Indian movie fans – who spend an estimated 63 billion rupees ($1.27 billion) each year at theaters – were again presented with a tepid array of aging Hollywood blockbusters and regional films Friday, the night usually reserved for new releases.
Richa Bose, a 23-year-old software engineer, stood out front of Inox cinema in south Mumbai, looking unhappily at his ticket for “Fast and Furious 4.”
“We don’t want to see it, but we don’t have a choice,” he said.
The dispute comes at a challenging time for India’s $1.8 billion film industry, which is struggling to deal with a dearth of blockbusters, tight funding, falling ticket sales and rising competition from television – especially during cricket season in April and May.
The standoff, which began April 4, has so far delayed the release of at least six major Bollywood films and two Hollywood movies, “Angels & Demons” and “X-Men Origins,” producers say.
Analysts estimate the boycott has already cost multiplexes 300 million rupees ($6 million).
Talks between producers, who want a larger share of box office revenues, and multiplex owners collapsed Tuesday, prompting Mumbai’s largest movie studios to vow to release new movies at single screen and non-chain theaters, beginning at the end of this month.
Multiplexes quickly shot back. Six chains – Fame India Ltd., Adlabs Films Ltd., Inox Leisure Ltd., PVR Ltd, Cinemax India Ltd., and Fun Multiplex Pvt. Ltd. – promised to gather a 400 million rupee ($8 million) war chest, and on Friday began hunting for films they could buy and distribute on their own.
Movie producers complain that India’s national multiplex chains – which control 5.2 percent of the nation’s 12,500 movie screens but account for 60 to 65 percent of ticket revenues because they charge more for tickets – have acted as a “cartel,” negotiating revenue sharing agreements on a per-film basis which puts individual producers at a disadvantage.
“We were not getting our fair share,” UTV Motion Pictures chief executive Siddharth Roy Kapur said in an interview Friday.
Producers asked for more timely and transparent payments and demanded a standard 50:50 after-tax revenue sharing agreement. During Tuesday’s talks, they retreated, saying they’d accept 45 percent in the second week, and 40 percent thereafter, Kapur said.
Shravan Shroff, managing director of Fame India, said multiplexes, with after-tax profit margins of 3 to 5 percent, can’t afford those ratios.
Multiplexes had wanted performance-based fees, but agreed to a standard revenue sharing agreement of 50:50 in the first week. In the second week after the release, the multiplexes wanted 60 percent of revenue, 70 percent in the third and 75 percent thereafter, said Shroff.
There has been no date set to resume negotiations.
In the meantime, movie theaters are emptying out. In April, average occupancy at multiplexes was less than 15 percent, down from 25 percent last April, executives and analysts say.
The Indian Premier League cricket season, which runs from April to May, has kept many people glued to their televisions at home. Normally, occupancy rates are about 35 percent.
Supreme Court Allows Multibillion-Dollar Class Action Lawsuit To Proceed Against Meta
The Supreme Court is allowing a multibillion-dollar class action investors' lawsuit to proceed against Facebook parent Meta, stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.
The justices heard arguments in November in Meta's bid to shut down the lawsuit. On Friday, they decided that they were wrong to take up the case in the first place.
The high court dismissed the company's appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.
Investors allege that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users' personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump 's first successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016.
Inadequacy of the disclosures led to two significant price drops in the price of the company's shares in 2018, after the public learned about the extent of the privacy scandal, the investors say.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company was disappointed by the court's action. "The plaintiff's claims are baseless and we will continue to defend ourselves as this case is considered by the District Court," Stone said in an emailed statement.
Meta already has paid a $5.1 billion fine and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users.
Cambridge Analytica had ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon. It had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million Facebook users. That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign.
The lawsuit is one of two high court cases involving class-action lawsuits against tech companies. The justices also are wrestling with whether to shut down a class action against Nvidia.... Read More