Rishab Shetty on the business viability of festival films like Pedro and Shivamma

Rishab’s productions Pedro and Shivamma have had phenomenal film festival runs, and the latter came to theatres too, but made no headway

Rishab Shetty gets candid about theatrical business of Shivamma

Rishab Shetty has backed a few ‘festival films’, two of which have completed the circuit, but are yet to reach a larger audience. Pedro, directed by Natesh Hegde, has had no theatrical or OTT outing, while Jaishankar Aryar’s Shivamma fared slightly better and came to movie halls. The response to the film, though, was far from encouraging, and there’s no OTT deal in sight.

During his speech at the International Film Festival of India last year, Rishab had spoken about the reluctance of OTT platforms in picking up Kannada content. What he had also said at the time was that when there are no avenues for filmmakers like him to recover the investment made on these festival darling films, the drive to continue making such movies will dry up eventually.

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Elaborating on this, during a recent X space conversation to promote his next production Laughing Buddha, Rishab had spoken openly about the “business” of Shivamma. “When Shivamma finished its festival run, we had recovered about 50% of our investment. But then we spent that money on the film’s theatrical release; the revenue we got from that was around Rs 3 lakh, which in turn went towards the service charge of uploading it to the end-to-end digital cinema technology provider (UFO or Qube),” he explains

Rishab adds, “The larger audience is not ready for films like Pedro and Shivamma. We may have got a lot of appreciation and a set of audience may have liked these films, but taking it to a larger audience is not an easy task. For that, we either need support from OTT platforms, or from the government in terms of subsidies, etc. Also, earlier, these festival films would travel across the globe and had a great market. This collapsed after the pandemic. So, now, releasing them in theatres in the hope of figuring out what kind of audience will like them is difficult.”

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In the realm of festival films, Shivamma has a more commercial flair to it, says Rishab, adding that he may recover his investment in the long-run. However, he is categoric that his intention while backing it was not to make money. It was his way of giving back to the industry, in terms of supporting new writers, filmmakers, talents, etc. This, he reckons, will help the Kannada film industry and those associated with it to grow.

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