Strike Completely paralyzes Tollywood| AndhraBoxOffice.com

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12/01/2010

Strike Completely paralyzes Tollywood

The producers, initially declared a strike protesting the attack of stunt masters from Tollywood on Tamil stunt masters. Angry at this one sided decision, AP film Employees Federation, an apex body of craftsmen and technicians decided not to go to any shoots until all pending issues are resolved.

Though it began as a demand by local stunt masters to safeguard their interests and revise their pay, all technicians, directors and producers have made the most of the fight by calling for an indefinite strike until all issues plaguing the industry are not resolved.

The Producers’ Council is now demanding a cut in the remuneration of stars. Technicians and other craftsmen are demanding a pay hike. And actors are demanding strict guidelines on having a bound script before starting a movie to downsize the budgets.

After Chiranjeevi’s brother Nagababu, who produced ‘Orange’, recently lashed out at directors for escalating movie budgets, producers were contemplating a shutdown of industry until the issues were resolved and new guidelines are laid out.With stunt masters' fighting episode, producers too decided to make the most of the moment and resolve their issues.

Ironically, small budget moviemakers have no faith in big producers and vice versa. With everyone making their own demands, the meetings between AP Film Chamber of Commerce, Telugu Film Producers’ Council, Movie Artistes Association(MAA), AP Film Employees Federation, the apex body of all the 24 crafts involved in movie making, have ended up in heated arguments and walk-outs since the past four days, displaying a clear lack of leadership in Telugu film industry.

Industry bigwigs like Akkineni Nageswara Rao, Dasari Narayana Rao, and the big four heroes of Tollywood — Chiranjeevi, Venkatesh, Nagarjuna and Balakrishna are choosing to stay mum on the issue. Tollywood is now visibly divided into several sub groups, with each one fighting with the other. With shootings getting cancelled, no one knows when work will resume. As a matter of fact, everyone in the industry is puzzled on why a dispute between two stunt master groups led to an indefinite strike?.

Big movie releases are in the pipeline,, everyone in the industry is confused on what is going to happen next. Post production work of several movies has stopped and press conferences and promotional activities for a few movies have been called off.The whole episode has displayed a complete lack of unity and leadership in Tollywood in handling crisis.