Catherwood LibraryILR School

Bollywood producers and distributors of Hindi-language films ended a two-month long dispute with movie theater owners Friday. The two groups had disagreed about how to split revenue from movie ticket sales, which used to be negotiated by movie, and the filmmakers eventually went on strike, significantly hurting revenue on both sides throughout April and May. The filmmakers sought a 50-50 split of ticket monies, while theater owners maintained that Hindi films often did too poorly to support a 50-50 split. In the compromise, theaters and filmmakers split revenue evenly for the first week, and then filmmakers receive a smaller share of each proceeding week's revenue. Producers receive bonus revenue for particularly successful films, but must give rebates on unsuccessful ones. Theater owners claim that "all of us are happy about the deal."