Veteran producer M S Raju expressed shock over the decision of U S president Trump decision to impose 100% tariff on Telugu movies. “It will badly impact the revenues of Telugu films but I haven’t studied the entire order,. I’ll go through it. However, prima facie it sounds alarming, “says M S Raju who claims that United States is the biggest market for star studded Telugu movies. “Big stars like Prabhas, Allu Arjun, Ram Charan, Mahesh Babu, Jr NTR along with Chiranjeevi and Balakrishna have expanded their fan base. Big movies generate Rs 80 crore to 100 crores per film and covers a good chunk of Telugu film budgets made over 200, 300 crores and above. Even smaller films make 8 to 10 crores so any rise in tariff will cut down our revenues drastically which will go against our interest” , he informs.
He claims that barring movies of A listers in Tollywood, the prices for Hindi dubbing rights and digital Rights have been cut down, while satellite rights have touched rock bottom. “The rates have come down for most Telugu movies and now, Trump new levy would push producers into mess. Ironically, the remunerations of stars, actresses and director have gone up, while recoverable options are going out of hand, one after other and leaving a wide margin between budgets and recovery, he points out.
He claims that Telugu filmmakers have to make films in USA to avoid additional tariffs, but it would be difficult to switch over to US all of a sudden. “Locations are demanded by scripts and not other way round. Maybe, we can make an handful so we hope Trump adminstration would rethink and give some relief to Telugu movies which is slowly winning appreciation of US citizens. Enable us to count our revenues in US dollars which are any given day are 80 times more than Indian rupee and other currencies, he concludes.
