"Naana Neeya" - Latest Hit Movie in Malaysia

A rough experience by the Director and Producer of the Latest Hit Movie in Malaysia "Naana Neeya"

After reading this, I hope that everyone realise that why we should support our local indian entertainment industry. By rujjcoomarh

Thanks to Novin for the article.


By Dharmavathi of Crresendo Productions

Hi I am writing this to reach the ears of some who are unaware of Malaysian Tamil Movie Industry. Itis critical that Naana Neeya the movie makes it in terms of collectionsbecause it means that our Malaysian movie makers can bring in the moneyfor GSC. Why am i supporting GSC? Here is my story of why Naana Neeyais late to hit the screens ….LastSept, Crresendo (our company) approached Saimira Pyramid or is itPyramid Saimira to give us 7 theatres to screen our movie. The chargesthey quoted was RM 13,000 for Digital Transfers, RM 1500 for one keycode only usable at one particular cinema @ 7 which means another 10,500 for the key codes and the normal either 50:50 from the ticket salesafter the 10% tax deductions. Although, it was pretty exorbitant, inthe hope that the movie will bring in the collections we agreed.However, 2 days before the HD is to be forwarded to them, i was told ofnew terms that on top of these charges already existent we have to forkout another RM 500 for each show that is screened at each cinema!!Thatmeans assuming that i want to screen at 7 cinemas @ 3 showing daily ihave to pay them 73 500.00 a week!!! I would be a real STUPID businessperson to agree to these terms. These are the same persons who claimedthemselves here to contribute to the Malaysian movie industry.Theworst of the worst of this whole experience is the meeting we had withMr Chitra Lakshmanan of Pyramid Saimira wherein he expressed himselfvery clearly that they will never consider going on any sort ofpartnership with our venture and all payments must be made before thetransfers takes place in India.Not enough, to add insult, without even having seen our movie, he goeson that all Malaysian Movies are substandard and it is better for allthe local producers and directors to not produce substandard movies andhurt the local industry.Iwas shocked with his comment, i agree our local movies may not be atpar with Kollywood production, but we cannot forget that Tamil MovieIndustry is still an infant industry in Malaysia.Nevertheless, we have seen efforts like Aathma, Ivanthanda Heroetc…..personally i think Director Naga is a great movie maker and wouldbe able to perform even better if he had the same millions of ringgitto work with.The sad part is that Kollywood being at least 50-60 years industry still produces substandard movies compared to Hollywood and Hong Kong.I was pretty devastated that the local tamil movie producers are at themercy of vultures like these people…obviously i was forced to declinetheir offer. However, i stepped back to observe. I realised all themovies that was released by them barely survived a week at the theatres.Iwas totally down and demoralised because i have already spent about RM300K in terms of production and promotions for the movie and oursoundtrack album. It is my hard earned savings over the years which Ithought i had blew away just because of passion for Malaysian TamilMovie. I simply wanted to give up, i had already invested too much oftime and money and I wanted to abandon this project totally. The 2years i had spent on this had led me to neglect my duties as a motherto my kids, I was hardly there for them as my focus was totally ongetting this project of the ground and i really felt that i was anutter failure.However,upon the insistence of my distributor who is more like a brother to me,Kumar, i decided to give Golden Screen Cinemas a try. Kumar sent in ourpreview copy to the person in charge and after 2 weeks we received thecall saying that they were interested in the movie. Imagine my shockcause the person who viewed the movie are mainly Chinese who dont evenunderstand the language but they still decided to give it ago.Theyhave no charges, apart from the transfer charges which is not muchbecause it is in tapes, and we were given 3 weeks starting of with 5showings a week and the rest depended on the response from the public.I was truly humbled by this experience. The people whom i thought willnot support us because of color and race actually did because it is tothem business. They were not prententious that they are here to helpthe industry grow and all that crap neither are they interested to ripus just because the poor movie makers are so very passion driven.Infact, one of them even gave me hints as to how to further cut downthe costs. They are basically business driven. If a product haspotential earning power they are willing to invest in it, in the leastto give it a try. That is how we got this deal. I am beyond speechlessat their integrity and principles as compared to our people in thisindustry.Nowit is up to our Malaysian Indian public to keep this platform for usgoing. If GSC finds this deal not profitable it will definately effectwhatever following Malaysian Tamil movie lined up to be screened. So ihope with that in mind all you people please keep the word going aboutthe movie and help save our industry for without public support thereis never going to be an industry in this country.Recently,on one of my trips to GSC Mid Valley, I had the opportunity to peekinto the cinemas where Ah Long Pyt Ltd (A Malaysian Chinese Movie) wasbeing screened. I was overwhelmed by the Malaysian Chinese audience forthis movie. They were packed to the brim. I was moved to tears becauseI was totally taken by their support for their movie makers. In matterof no time the Malaysian Chinese Movie Industry is going tobreakthrough the International platform. It is simply too obvious.Their secret of their success is UNITY AND SYNERGY.However,I am truly sad that that will never be the same for us. When is theMalaysian Indian public going to change its mindset that Malaysian mademovies are no good compared to the ones from India.How many NS Krishnas, GANAs and Shans are going to become victims tothis industry just because they are passionate about wanting to seegrowth in our industry. There are 1.8 million Indians inthis country and we do not even have 10K viewers for our movies butmovies like Shivaji the Boss can collect the same amount like Lord ofthe Rings……Asfar as the people in the industry are concerned they are simply notunited, not even capable of thinking beyond themselves. The playersthemselves mostly anyway, think they are the best, refuse to accepttheir shortcomings and improve on it. They think they are the greatest.This mindset has to change at least I hope it will. I am willing, forthe sake of the industry growth. I would love to see a Shanker, aManiratnam, a P Vasu or KS Ravikumar of our own. I would love to seeInternational Standard productions and Film Festivals and AwardsFestivals in honour of these people and I truly PRAY that it willhappen one day but the glaring truth is that it will simply not betoday, not with the attitude of the existing ones I am afraid. Weneed more of the younger generation to get involved and we need to haveproperly trained people who feel that movie making as a passion not aplatform just for fame, money and women.As far as the Indian cinema chains are concerned, they would rather cash in on movies from India.They would rather keep buying at exorbitant prices and further spend interms of marketing as in advertising etc but when it comes to theMalaysian movie makers they would rather RIP THEM OFF. What more can Isay about this whole sad scenario. I am left speechless and maybe ifthis project fails in terms of collections I am going to join the otherdirectors and move on to Malay movie productions. What’s the point oftrying to work something that is going to be a failure? Sadly, being atamil movie no sponsor will sponsor us nor fund us in any way and Iknow of a few who had to finish up the productions by loaning moneyfrom banks and loansharks. I am truly glad that I did not follow suit.I worked within what I had and this is the limit. The worst part of it,my dad told me it will be so….and I refused to listen hoping to make achange…….HAVE I MADE THE CHANGE?Dharmavathi Crresendo Productions