Vishal's Groundbreaking Revolution Makes Him Adorable Icon Of Indian Showbiz

The 47-day long strike by Tamil Film Producers Council ended Tuesday. The stir led by president Vishal ended with several benefits for Tamil film industry. He is now flooded with appreciations and laurels not just from honchos of Tamil cinema but also the Indian film industry in general. He is now hailed as a leader who stood ground and fought for the welfare of the industry in general.
Even those who pointed fingers at him for halting production, release and post-production among others are now pouring accolades for the results his protests have got for industry. Many hail that it is the best that Tamil cinema has got in the last five decades.

All started when Vishal as President of Tamil Film Producers Council fixed wages for FEFSI employees. At a crucial juncture, he halted production and held series of talks with FEFSI and streamlined everything. It was unimaginable untill then. This act won him confidence of the members of TFPC. They stood by him when he began his fight against Digital Service Providers and various other demands with theatre-owners, exhibitors and from the State Government in particular.   
 
Today, the whole of Tamil cinema is happy and joyous. They say thanks to the efforts of the TFPC team led by Vishal, changes that are positive are visible and happening one after another. 100% computerised ticketing and transparency, 3 slabs in tickets with flexible ticketing within government allowed rates for the benefit of audience, 50% rate reduction on E Cinema which is more than half of the theatres in TN (D cinema prices will be fixed  according to the Joint Action Committee of South India), among others are seen as brownie points that assures success for them.

Qube agreeing to the demand for Rs 5000/week and Rs. 10,000 for full run as well as Rs 250/show is seen as a major achievement. It has led to  film industries in other languages also being benefited. This pricing structure will be tried for six months and before that time, we'll either make this permanent or tell them this doesn't work and revise the charges, said Vishal after talks with government and film bodies yesterday.

The achievements of this strike is reflecting in the whole Indian film industry. Vishal's visions and determination has benefited all, say a section of producers who were up in arms untill recently against him.

The office bearers of Tamil Film Producer Council had a brief meeting with all the producers of Tamil film industry followed by the press and media interaction session here in Chennai now. During the press meet, Vishal, President of Tamil Film Producer Council said, “We are really thankful to Tamil Nadu Government, Honourable Chief Minister Edappadi Palanisamy, Honourable Cabinet Ministers Kadambur Raju and Veeramani and everyone for being so much supportive in our crucial need.  It’s been 30 days no shooting was held and 47 days without any new releases. At this juncture, we are so much thankful to the entire Tamil Film Producers for being supportive. Especially, FEFSI Leader RK Selvamani and all the workers for being patient during the critical situation. They all waited till our mission had to be accomplished and we owe them a lot.”

Recollecting the minutes of the meeting that happened yesterday (April 17), Vishal continued to add saying, “It all started as a debate among us yesterday and finally we all became united with the theatre owners to get the need done. It is worth mentioning that the theatre projection comprises of two classifications – D Cinema and E Cinema. This is something that we have been fighting for nearly four years and it’s getting accomplished now. Around 1200 theatres out here in Tamil Nadu, around 550 of them is comprised of E-Cinema projection. It’s going to be a weekly pay of 5000 rupees, which was earlier 9000. We would say that it is going to be a big boon for the small and medium budget producers. Moreover, we are planning with all efforts to regularize certain things from June 1 that includes the transparency in ticketing. In addition, the collection reports of every film along with the ticket sales along with the ‘HEAD COUNT’ into theatres would be made available as information. There is yet another issue that has been prevailing in the theatre business that includes additional charges on ticketing that goes around 30rs, which in addition to the new GST charges has been playing a burden on audiences. We have been taking special initiatives to regularize this as well. The Tamil Nadu Government will be helping us to subsidize the rates and on pars, Tamil Film Producer Council will be making its own way of bringing some change in the scenario. This will involve the transaction charges of around 4-5 rupees for the ticketing. The process of bringing this into action has already commenced.  The flexibility of tickets will be made ranging between Rs.50 to Rs.150. Such efforts are efficiently to bring audiences into theatres.”

While thanking the league of producers who were really supportive, Vishal said, “We at Tamil Film Producer Council are really thankful to Wunderbar Films Dhanush, Superstar Rajinikanth and Lyca Productions for being so much supportive over holding the release of ‘Kaala’. Especially, it’s the need of hour to thank Karthik Subbaraj and the producers of ‘Mercury’. If they had thought of releasing it, they could have easily proceeded for the movie has been released in many other regional places.”

Regarding the commencement of movie releases and shooting resume, Vishal added, “The shooting of all movies can commence from the coming Friday (April 20) after the producers are submitting the agreement copies to the council, which in turn get the approval of FEFSI to kick-start the shooting.

Getting on with the furthermore release of movies, Vishal said, “We are setting up the ‘RELEASE REGULARITY COMMITTEE’, which will comprise of Producers, Distributors, FEFSI office bearers, who will be regularizing the release dates. There are around 14 big festive occasions, usually that will have the big movies releasing. So the producers of these big movie can book the release dates till March 31, 2019 now itself. Based on this, there will be scheduling of low and medium budget movies. The first release scheduled from this week would be Friday along with which couple of small budget movies will happen.”

The committee members present for the occasion were RK Selvamani, FEFSI President followed by SR Prabhu (TPFC Treasurer), Kathiresan and SS Durai Raj (TFPC  Honourable Secretaries), EC members – RK Suresh, R Udhay Kumar, AL Udhaya, Praveenkanth, Mittai Anbu and SS Kumaran.

The event was very well organized by Johnson PRO and CK Ajay Kumar PRO.