“‘Thalaivii’, which is made on a budget of Rs 90 crore, is one of the biggest female centric movies. We are theatre made people and our producers felt that we should support them. We have rejected several exclusive streaming offers but we didn’t know that we won’t get any support from theatres. By the grace of God we have managed to recover the money in Hindi, but we have got a window of only two weeks which is not acceptable to theatre owners. According to their contract they need a gap of four windows. For Hindi theatres we know that they have a reasoning but in South India too ‘Thalaivii’ is releasing in four languages with a gap of four weeks but still the multiplexes are not ready to release it. In fact they are naming big studios and stating that they will not allow a few things. They are getting carried away by listening to a few studios and destroying individual producers, tomorrow if those theatres have to cancel shows for lack of audience, will they still stick to these contracts and not boycott the studios? I think multiplex owners need to leave gangism and groupism and think about getting the audience back in theatres,” expressed the actress.
Speaking about the controversy producer Vishnuvardhan Induri had told ETimes, “This happens. We are still negotiating with them, but we have to also make sure that we recover our investment. The theatre owners should support us because we are taking the risk of releasing the film in theatres despite the fact that as producers we have got returns from non-theatrical platforms.”
