PVR Boycotts All Malayalam Movies, Stops Bookings

While Telugu film lovers might be waiting to watch the Telugu version of Premalu and Manjummel Boys, the Malayalam industry is looking forward to the Ramzan weekend releases like Fahadh Faasil’s Aavesham, Vineeth Sreenivasan’s Varshangalkku Shesham, and Unni Mukundan’s Jai Ganesh that are releasing today. Guess what, the country’s biggest multiplex theatre chain PVR INOX has now given a shocker.

While producers make the movies, they have to encode them into a format that allows them to screen the movies in multiplexes and digital projection systems, where the likes of UFO and Qube come into play. Complaining that these players that master the content are charging high rates, Malayalam Producers started their own digital content mastering system, PDC (Producer’s Digital Content) and asked the likes of PVR to use this digital system at their newly constructed theatres. Enraged by this move, PVR, which has to invest a lot again for projection systems that will support PDC, has decided to stop screening Malayalali films.

For PVR, they have to pay fees to the likes of Qube and UFO for the KDM (Key Delivery Message – a kind of password), even though the producer has already paid for the ‘print’ conversion (DCP – Digital Cinema Package) already.

Though it is being spread in Tollywood that a film belonging to a leading Telugu producer is being targeted, there is no truth in it. PVR has stopped bookings of Malayalam films and screening of those movies across India at all their chains.