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Small-screen bonanza

Box office hits: ‘Udayananu Tharam,’ and ‘Lion’ are some of the movies that will be screened during Onam.

Years ago, the rights of the Sathyan Anthikad film ‘Sanmanssullavarkku Samadhanam,’ was bought for Rs.50,000 and screened in many churches across Kerala. “That smart businessman ended up making more money out of the film than the producer himself,” says Sathyan. “I doubt if the producer made much money by selling the movie to television, either.”

But ‘Sanmanassullavarkku Samadhanam’ was made in 1986, a good seven years before Asianet began its two-hour daily transmission, heralding the arrival of satellite television that spoke Malayalam. Two decades later, a big movie on the small screen is big money too. And Onam is that time of the year when box office hits are premiered at prime time on almost all television channels.

Blockbusters have always been there on television during Onam and other festivals, but this Onam will take some beating, surely. ‘Rajamanikyam,’ ‘Udayananu Tharam,’ ‘Bharat Chandran IPS’ and ‘Chanthupottu’ were the biggest hits of 2005. And ‘Vadakkumnathan’ was one of the success stories of 2006. You can watch all these movies on television during the Onam holidays. A few other superstar movies will also be premiered over the next few days.

“There are so many big films at the same time because the competition among Malayalam channels for the satellite rights of movies has become intense. But these superstar films come to us at a price,” says C. Praveen, chief operating officer, Surya TV. And that price is anywhere between Rs. 50 to 65 lakhs. S. Deepu, territory manager, marketing, Asianet, says the channels have no option but to pay that kind of money.

“Three years ago, you could buy a big movie for half the price that is being demanded today. The prices went through the top when a new channel – which hasn’t taken off yet though – began buying the satellite rights at outrageous rates. The irony is that that the channel was forced to sell many of those movies at a loss,” he adds.

But the channels screening blockbusters are certainly not incurring losses. “Sometimes, we get our money back with the first screening itself. Moreover, we will be showing the same movie several times and will be making a profit at the end of the day. But, we pay the entire amount for the satellite rights before the film is released, that is two years before we may televise it. So that is dead money for two years,” Deepu elaborates. And when the channel buys a movie, it does not know if the film will do well at the box office.

“Again you have no choice; if you don’t buy it, your competitor will. And showing big movies during festivals is an issue of prestige for channels,” says Praveen.

When P.V. Gangadharan of Grihalakshmi Productions began making films, there was no television, let along satellite television. “Satellite rights and overseas rights are the new sources of revenue for Malayalam films, but I strongly feel a film should be shown on television only after two years of its release,” he says.

It is very rarely though that a producer sells the film directly to the channel. The channels mostly buy a film through middlemen, who sometimes get really lucky when a producer in a financial crisis is willing to give the satellite rights at a discount.

Siraj Valiyaveettil, the producer of ‘Rajamanikyam,’ one of the biggest box office hits in the history of Malayalam cinema, admits that satellite rights are a welcome addition to a film’s revenue.

“But the cost of making a film is alarmingly increasing day by day; it is always the producer who has to bear the brunt of a film’s failure,” he says. And when a superstar’s film fails, the channels cannot hope to make a killing out of it by selling their ad spots.

“But, then, we have several films such as ‘Kilukkam’ and ‘Nadodikkattu’ that attract advertisers whenever we screen them; we had acquired their rights for a song, compared to today’s rates,” says Deepu.

“One of the reasons why people continue to like actors like me is because of those great old movies being shown on television again,” says Mohanlal, whose films you are almost certain to catch every day on some channel or the other. Good movies are like good books. You can go back to them several times.

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