Film ticket sales slip, one screening delayed

Note ban has hit Hindi film market hard. The $2.32-billion (or Rs 15,500 crore) market is feeling the impact at multiple levels. One, movies that released in the wake of note ban have seen their box office collections shrink dramatically. 

The key film here is Farhan Akhtar-starrer Rock On 2, whose collections, according to analysts, is estimated at Rs 7-8 crore in the first five days following release on Friday. This, they say, is an abysmal number, since the expectation was that the movie, a sequel to the 2008-released Rock On, a film about a rock music band and its members, would do better in the initial week following release.

The second impact of note ban has been on small-budget movies. One such called Saansein, a horror film, which was to release on November 11 (Friday), has been postponed to a later date.

The producer of Saansein, Goutam Kumar Jain, said postponement was thought through carefully after taking into account the current circumstances. Typically, movie-goers in India, especially in small towns and cities, purchase movie tickets in cash. While credit card and digital payments in urban areas have  grown, they still, according to experts, account for a third of ticket bookings in multiplexes.