MAA President Manchu Vishnu calls for collective discussion over ticket prices issue

Manchu Vishnu who has been recently entitled to the post of the President of the Movie Artists Association (MAA) in Tollywood has said that the Government of Andhra Pradesh (AP) has done the right thing by allowing movie producers to raise the ticket prices for movies.

In the month of February, directors such as SS Rajamouli, Koratala Siva and actors Chiranjeevi, Mahesh Babu, and Prabhas among many others visited the AP Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy. To discuss the issue of movie ticket prices in Andhra Pradesh, they had requested the government to increase ticket prices.

Following this, the government had allowed a rational increase in the price of tickets for big-budget movies or rather left it to the producers to decide. A maximum increase of ₹50 was allowed for big-budget movies. Movies such as RRR benefitted from this move, while Acharya which did not do well at the box office, had a negative impact. Due to the negative talk generated, people did not want to spend the additional amount and watch a movie at the theatre as they rather opted to wait for it to release on an OTT platform. Similarly, small budget movies are losing out on business due to this price hike agenda.

Due to this, there has been a huge debate around this new move in the Telugu Film Industry. Commenting on the same, Vishnu Manchu stated that the decision of ticket prices hike in AP, is that of producers and also said that this new move only benefited a few movies and others have also suffered losses.

While speaking to the media he asked the leaders of the industry and association to get together and talk about it, in order to devise a better solution.