In response to actor Vishal’s statements about piracy at the Marudhu press meet, Tirupur Subramaniam, a popular distributor and theatre owner in the Coimbatore and Tirupur areas, said that the onus was not on small town theatres. Vishal had said, “Even as we speak now, somewhere someone is designing and printing CD/DVD wrappers for Marudhu. If I come across any such disks, I will make sure I find out which theatre it was filmed at, and complain about them at the Producers Council. This is my ultimatum to such criminals.”
However, Subramaniam says that video piracy originates from theatres abroad, not Tamil Nadu, “Most theatres in small towns do not have a revenue of more than Rs.2000 a day. They cannot employ more than 2 or 3 staff members, and some miscreants make use of this opportunity. Even now, we are in discussions with QUBE to lock the content of these movies between 2 am nd 9 am, so that such practices do not happen. Moreover, if there are 200 cases of piracy every year, almost 190 of them happen at overseas theatres in countries like Singapore and Malaysia. Why can’t the actors themselves get the overseas rights of films and release the film there two weeks after initial release?” he questioned.
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He also said that the demand for a high Minimum Guarantee had caused many theatres in the southern districts to close down. “No producer demands an advance from multiplexes in Chennai. It’s the theatre owners from smaller towns that bear the brunt of paying an advance. Why don’t Vishal and the Nadigar Sangam decide against this? Also, actors like Delhi Ganesh had complained that smaller films like his son’s Ennul Aayiram did not get many theatres. How can we screen small films when not many are willing to watch it?” he asked. He added that films with content were always encouraged by theatre owners. For instance, Irudhi Suttru had begun with two shows a day, but shows were increased to twelve the next day.
Subramaniam also said that actors made many statements in public, but splurged the producers’ money in unnecessary arrangements like success meets and other forms of promotion, whereas that money could have been used to fight piracy.