‘L2: Empuraan effect’: Malayalam filmmakers need to look at new ways of financing

The Malayalam film industry has a problem – and it’s not just to do with the ‘L2: Empuraan’ effect.

By now, the producers associated with the Mohanlal-Prithiviraj blockbuster have been subjected to raids or been asked by India’s tax men to prove that their remuneration tally actually adds up. And that they have paid all what’s due under their tax obligations.

But the Malayalam film industry’s issues run much deeper than the controversies surrounding L2: Empuraan. It’s much more than about whether some producers or actors have fallen foul of the powers.

What Malayalam cinema needs at the production level of the presence of bona fide corporate houses, which operate their finances transparently and with full disclosure. This is how it’s done in India’s biggest film industry, Bollywood. Something that came about only over the last two decades, and has pulled it out of the hands of external influences and parallel financing. (It’s another matter whether Hindi movies have become better for it, but at the very least, the industry’s practitioners no longer operate behind the curtains.)

Some of that has rubbed off on the Tamil and Telugu industries too, leading to bigger canvases, better remunerations for industry workers other than the superstars and lead actors.

Which is why it’s high time the Malayalam film industry caught up with the rest of India.

For way too long, a group of entrenched producers have pulled the strings, dealing in the only currency that matters – whether they are close to the Malayalam superstars on not. That in turn meant distributors took them on, the movies got made, and reached the screens. Then, on to a new movie.

It’s over the last year that Indian tax men and the Enforcement Directorate has become interested in what the Malayalam film making ways are all about. By the looks of it, they are not liking much of what they are seeing. (Which is one reason why apart from ‘L2: Empuraan’, producers in general have not been crowing about the box-office collections too much. You just don’t want to get the ED’s close attention in any way…)

In specific terms, India’s tax men have questions how Malayalam film producers are putting together the financing for these creative endeavors. And whether they can indeed account for each rupee that shows up in the production.

Get things wrong, and there is a lot of answering that Malayalam film producers need to make. Much like Gokulam Gopalan, who got roped in as ‘L2: Empuraan’ producer at the very last minute, so to speak. Where he is even quoted as saying that the Rs1 billion he put into the money was well-spent given the publicity it generated.

It sure has gotten him into the 24-hour news cycle, but not in ways he would have wanted. To the extent that he has spending much of his time trying to convince the tax men that all his finances are in order.

If he manages to do that convincing, good for him – and the people behind ‘L2: Empuraan’. If not, there will be other Malayalam film producers and financiers who could be having similar intense conversations with the likes of Enforcement Directorate.

These may not come with happy endings…