The Finance Minister has announced that the GST will "subsume entertainment tax and service tax to replace it with a single 28% tax".

Bollywood is happy as Entertainment Tax in Maharashtra is a high 45 per cent. It will now be paying lesser. So, Hindi film industry will see its profit margins going up. Films made in Delhi and UP too are going to benefit from the new tax regime.

On the other hand, Telugu films pay an entertainment tax of 15 per cent in the Telugu States. They may not gain much in the new regime. This could mean that ticket prices will go up. Suresh Babu and KTR called on Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in December last to avert this.

Worse still, local taxes loom large. Local bodies like municipalities still have the power to tax on movies.

Whether GST will be beneficial to the film industry, on balance, will be clear only by the end of 2019 or so, analysts say.