Malayalam movie directors Amal Neerad and Anwar Rasheed say their movies had been singled out by a clique of distributors because they did not support an undeclared strike in the industry.
Neerad said his latest movie, CIA, had been barred from being exhibited in theaters for the last 42 days. Movie halls were also being pressured not to screen the upcoming Parava, directed by Soubin Shahir and co-produced by Rasheed.
Neerad and Rashid said they were planning to complain to the chief minister and the culture minister against the practices that targeted moviemakers.
‘CIA’ was released on May 5, a week after Rajamouli’s Bsahubali was released. Many of the theaters who had agreed to exhibit ‘CIA’ backtracked once Baahubali was released, Neerad said.
“We had an agreement with the Apsara Theater in Kozhikode to screen CIA four times a day. They told us on the eve of the release that the movie would be shown only three times, so that they could show Baahubali twice. We immediately lodged a complaint with the association but our movie was reduced to two shows and Baahubali was shown three times,” he added.
He said that the action was in violation of all norms. CIA was still running to full house when the number of shows was reduced.
Later, a representative of the distributors’ association called up the office of the directors and said the movie could not be exhibited due to a strike.
CIA was nevertheless shown on multiplex screens because the flash strike threatened to push the moviemakers into huge losses. The association, however, followed up on the threat by lobbying the 49 ‘B’ and ‘C’ class theaters which were supposed to screen CIA.
The distribution association has been accused of targeting movie makers. The association has been taken to task by the Competition Commission of India several times. Siyad Koker has been at the helm of the association for four years without conducting elections.
Koker had planned to work with Rasheed in a movie titled Maniyarayile Jinnu, but the project was dropped because the script was not ready by a deadline.
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