Dil Raju, Mythri Movie Makers' Y Ravi Shankar and Sithara Entertainments' S Naga Vamsi have opined that theatrical revenues will be the sole determinant of the success of Telugu movies in 2024 and beyond.
Speaking in a roundtable discussion, S Naga Vamsi said that the revenue streams have come down in the last couple of years for Telugu movies. "The Hindi dubbing rights market has come down crashing. The satellite revenue is negligible. OTT platforms are increasingly becoming cautious about the prices they are quoting," he said.
The distribution system has been on a weak footing, to make matters worse. There was a time when the number of distributors was more than two dozen in Tollywood. It is now practically just a dozen or so. If some of these distributors bear the brunt of big-ticket disasters, they will disappear from the industry.
"In Bollywood, only 4-5 distribution houses exist. Most of the releases there have been done by the producers themselves. In Kollywood, too, the number of distributors is very low. Eventually, the same culture will come to prevail in Telugu cinema," Y Ravi Shankar said.
