Corona fear forces industry to shut down for a week, Rs 200 crore at stake ?

It was megastar Chiranjeevi, who halted the shoot for 10-15 days, as a preventive measure for the entire cast and crew of his upcoming film 'Acharya.'

He also requested everyone to be safe and responsible. "This is everyone's responsibility. I request all the producers to postpone the shootings for another 10 to 15 days since shootings require manpower of 100 to 200 people. Avoiding large-scale gathering is important to contain the spread of coronavirus," Chiranjeevi said in a statement.

Subsequently, on Sunday, Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce announced shutdown of shootings until March 21. Narayana Das Narang of Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce declared that all crafts of the Telugu film industry have decided to halt the movie shootings for a week effective from Monday.

"This will also apply to shootings in foreign locations as well," he said. "Shootings require a large number of the crew working together in one place but the government has asked to avoid large-gatherings as a precautionary measure to contain the coronavirus. We have decided to stop all our activities for a week," Narayana Das announced.

Eventually, star-studded films like Rajamouli's 'RRR', Prabhas 20, Balakrishna-Boyapati movie, Nagarjuna's 'Wild Dog' and Venkatesh's 'Narrappa' are some of big budget movies that have to take a break for a week or more.

"It is unavoidable but more than Rs 200 crore is at stake since all these films are big budget flicks. If the shutdown extends beyond a week, it will create a flutter in the industry," says producer Bandla Ganesh, who claims that re-adjusting dates of big stars will be a problem since actors from different languages are involved in various productions.

"Apart from escalating the production cost, the shutdown will force makers to re-adjust dates of stars and crew. Sometimes, it takes months to get few days of a B-town actors. Getting combination dates of character artistes from different languages will add to producer's woes," adds Bandla Ganesh.

If coronavirus spread is contained drastically and things become normal, the shootings will resume, until then the members of film fraternity will be confined to their homes.

"We are abiding my State government orders and announced the shutdown since we didn't want to take chances.

Of course, some producers will face problems and could lead to escalation of costs, but we are left with no choice," says Vijayender Reddy, Treasurer, Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce.