What’s Happening Between Vyjayanthi Movies & Prathyangira Cinemas?

There’s been an E-Mail circulating on social media over the last couple of days related to Europe’s final settlement issue between Vyjayanthi Movies & Prathyangira Cinemas, North America and Europe distributor of the film, Kalki 2898 AD. Both the involved parties explained their side of the story on public platforms. What exactly are the issues? After going through the E-Mail in circulation, we understand the following. 

Vyjayanthi Movies, the producers of the movie, Kalki 2898 AD, sold the Europe distribution rights for ₹5.3 Crores on a ‘recoverable advance’ basis to the distributor, Prathyangira Cinemas, who also distributed the film in North America. The distributor then asked ‘The Village Groupe’ to execute the film in Europe. The Village Groupe released the film in most countries across Europe with the help of local distributors. Once the film’s run is over, The Village Group received the final Gross vs. share statement by excluding all the expenses (i.e. theatre rentals, marketing & censor fee, etc.) from the local distributors across the Europe. 

According to the final Gross vs. share statement, the local distributors showed only £365K as the share from the total gross of £1.2 Million that the film collected in its full run. The producer of the film is unable to accept the fact that the share mentioned in the statement is only around 35% against the market norm of about 50%. Prathyangira Cinemas’ too felt the share amount mentioned in the final statement by local distributors is on the lower side and asked the members from The Village Groupe to rework the statement by having discussions with local distributors. As per the mail in circulation, the local distributors mentioned double taxation, higher rental costs, marketing and censoring costs in the statement which eventually lessens the share that the actual distributor or producer receives. The local distributors did not get prior approval for all these higher rental costs, marketing and censoring costs and it came as a shock to Producer.

Prathyangira Cinemas also executed the film in North America and they submitted the final statement to producer and processed the balance (Over Flow) payment to the producer by holding ₹3.5 Crores. As Per  Prathyangira Cinemas, they hold the ₹3.5 Crores because they already have paid ₹5.3 Crores as recoverable advance for Europe rights and the producer is supposed to pay the remaining amount to the distributor in case the film did not collect the ₹5.3 Crores share from Europe. As per the mail in circulation, Prathyangira Cinemas did not even got the share of £365K yet from the Europe local distributors. They only received £261K so far and another £104K is yet to be received.

However, the producer of the film allegedly insisting on Prathyangira Cinemas to clear the ₹3.5 Crores first and asking the distributor to sort the issue with local distributors in Europe separately. However, the distributor is not agreeing to pay the ₹3.5 Crores to the producer without sorting out Europe’s final statement. We hope both parties find an amicable solution soon.

This entire issue shows how messed up the South Indian film distribution network in Europe is. Allegedly, for almost every movie, the actual distributor is getting very little to negligible shares from local distributors in Europe because of the high costs that are being shown and in some cases, it is said that the local distributors arrange private shows by selling tickets on Whatsapp and are not reporting these numbers in the final Gross. The distribution company, Prathyangira Cinemas is a well-established company in North America and if a distributor company like them faces issues like this for trying to enter into the European distribution market, then imagine the plight of small-time distributors who buy entire films overseas rights and sell their movies to local distributors in Europe? This looks like a serious issue that needs to be addressed in some way or the other by all the involved parties in the industry.