Earlier this Thursday, we reported about the passing of M Saravanan, more popularly known as AVM Saravanan, due to age-related illnesses. The owner of AVM Studios is regarded as one of the most influential filmmakers in India. Besides backing mainstreaming films, the company is also known for its direct-to-streaming releases, such as Idhuvum Kadandhu Pogum and Tamil Rockerz. The crime thriller, which follows a police officer's (Arun Vijay) quest to find and stop the team behind the torrent website Tamil Rockers from releasing a film before its theatrical release, marked AVM Studios' entry into the web series space. Speaking of piracy, Saravanan talked about the issue in an interview with TNIE that dates back to October 03, 1987.
The filmmaker suggested that the government cancel excise duty levied on the creation of additional film prints to help tackle piracy. "Now, we have to juggle with 36 prints. Because of this, a new release of ours reaches certain centres, say Mannargudi, six months after its first release. This sort of thing encourages video piracy. And piracy does harm both to us and the government," AVM Saravanan told TNIE back then.
The Excise Duty, which applied to the production of film prints as well, played a role in the eventual copy count that was made, which affected the sequential film release model that was prevalent back in the day and that Saravanan referred to. Factors such as film manufacturing cost and logistics once played a role in the delay in films' releases in centres outside of the main locations. When the cost was high, partly due to the said duty, it played a role in the production of a limited number of prints for the so-called A centres, locations where a particular film was likely to generate plenty of revenue. This is partly why Saravanan made the aforementioned suggestion.
