Hyderabad, April 07: The Telugu film industry is in distress over brand new films being made available on the Internet, sometimes the very next day after their release.
The loss on account of some sites hosting films in the fourth quarter of the last financial year (Jan to March) is estimated at `80 crore and is likely to go up further.
Almost all films released during the festival season- Mirapakay, Ala Modalindi, Golconda High School, Aha Na Pellanta, Gaganam, Mr Perfect, Prema Kavali, Theen Maar are available online and anyone with a good bandwidth Internet connection can even stream and watch them online.
“Even without this, the film industry is going through a bad phase with only five out of 42 releases from January to May doing well,” says Telugu Film Producers’ Association secretary T Prasanna Kumar.
And with high bandwidth Internet becoming widely available for as less as `750 per month, viewership on Internet is likely to go up further, dealing a blow to the industry.
“These days only 20-30 per cent audience goes to the theatres to watch films while the remaining prefer to watch the films on Internet.
The films can also be downloaded into CDs and played on TVs for better effect. With the youth becoming increasingly Internet savvy, they are downloading them from torrent sites or streaming,” he adds. Prasanna Kumar suspects that brand new films released abroad are being shot with cameras and being hosted online. The places where it is easy to shoot a film in a theatre include Dubai, London, Malaysia and Singapore.
He said the government had asked the film industry to provide `12 crore so that it could block these films on the Internet in India. But though the industry was willing to pay, no steps have been taken in this direction so far. He said the industry would once again make a representation to the government to speed up the process.
Regarding circulation of pirated CDs, CID IG Jitendar said they have directed all superintendents of police to control piracy in their respective districts. He said they have also requested the government to make piracy a non-bailable offence.
–Agencies