Adding silver back to screen: Bold moves aim to revive movie business

R S Prasanna’s Sitaare Zameen Par is a heartwarming film — not just cinematically. Its success, following the decision of its producer, Aamir Khan Production (AKPL), to hold back on any OTT deal till the movie has had a full run in theatres, has brought hope and cheer to the Indian film industry. 

With this move, actor Aamir Khan, who owns AKPL, has bucked the trend wherein most large production houses release a film only after stitching an OTT deal. This helps them recover costs — and even make a small profit — before the film even hits theatres. 

This is because of “the release window between theatre and streaming,” says Yusuf Galabhaiwala, director-operations of Galalite Screens, a Mumbai-based screen-making firm. The shorter the window, usually 2-6 weeks, the less likely it is that audiences will walk into the theatre to see a small- or medium-budget film such as 12th Fail or Laapataa Ladies, which is more about the story than about star power or histrionics, a la Pushpa 2. 

With Sitaare Zameen Par, which hit theatres on June 20, Aamir Khan, who has been critical of the short window between a film’s theatrical and OTT release, has put his money where his mouth is. 

Another person who has taken it upon himself to help turn the industry’s fortunes around is SVF Entertainment’s cofounder Mahendra Soni. 

His firm is working to revive cinema screens in West Bengal, where their count had fallen from 400 in 2000 to 140 in 2015. SVF, which has produced films like Chokher Bali, Raincoat, and Chitrangada, mapped the state’s 23 districts and started building, managing, or acquiring screens. Bolpur, Purulia, Krishnanagar, Narendrapur, Baruipur, Jalpaiguri are among the 23 West Bengal towns where it now manages or owns 53 screens. The count is expected to go up to 75 in the financial year ending March 2026. Meanwhile, the overall number of screens in the state has gone up to nearly 200. 

“Kolkata is multilingual, but outside of the city, only Bengali films work,” says Soni. “Our collections were dipping not because the city wasn’t working, but because there weren’t enough theatres outside of Kolkata.”  

SVF Entertainment, which had a revenue of ₹300 crore in FY24, has distributed over 1,500 films, of which it has made 250. Its share of the net box office collection in West Bengal has doubled from under 10 per cent to 20 per cent. “Our screens emerged in places that had no cinemas,” says Soni. In the city of Chinsurah, for instance, box office collections went up from zero to ₹15 lakh for a single film. “This is pure additive revenue.”

 

To expand, grow, and become profitable, Indian cinema needs three things: more screens, money to make more movies, and better marketing. 

SVF’s response to the declining number of screens and AKPL’s to the broken cinema-going habit are part of the efforts to pull the Indian movie business out of the tough spot it finds itself in (See: Bollywood’s dry run). 

Bringing in money & audience 

Late last year, filmmaker Karan Johar sold half his stake in Dharma Productions to Serum Institute of India’s CEO Adar Poonawalla for ₹1,000 crore. 

Around the same time, the family-run Baweja Productions, the studio behind Mrs, Chaar Sahibzaade, and Diljale, went public to raise about ₹97 crore. “Venture capital/private equity funds look at the business differently. This mode gives us room to expand,” says Harman Baweja, its chairman and managing director. 

From one a year, Baweja Productions is now looking at 5-7 projects across theatre, streaming, and television, besides dabbling in various genres, including animation, and languages. This ability to scale up, with non-strategic capital, is critical if the falling number of films hitting theatres has to be tackled. 

More screens, more films, and longer windows will convert to more people watching, assuming they know a film is releasing. As it stands today, for big releases, like Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, or small ones, like Su­p­­erboys of Malegaon, promotional activities begin quite late in the day — often, just before the first weekend. 

“Marketing has become very formulaic and templatised,” says Jyoti Deshpande, president, Jio Studios. “It is about releasing a trailer on YouTube and Meta, and buying views. That informs the trade, but does it help convert into actual people buying the ticket?” she asks. “People spend 10 per cent of their budget on BookMyShow. But what are they doing to get the audience onto BookMyShow?” asks Soni. 

Jio Studios, meanwhile, is among others, like Galalite and Dolby, who are continuing to invest to expand the market. 

This July, City Pride in Pune will be among the first of the six theatres to have Dolby Cinema in India. It includes a bundle of products and services, from projection and Atmos screens (of which there are 1,000 in India) to the actual physical design of the seating and speakers. 

“Our brand has been built on cinema; it is the first point of entry for our products in India,” says Sameer Seth, director, marketing (India), Dolby Laboratories. “We need collaborations with large international companies to take our film international; the algorithm (on streaming) will not throw up Laapataa Ladies,” says Deshpande. Jio Studios’ focus is on bringing down the cost of production using artificial intelligence and other technologies. 

It is initiatives such as these, and bold decisions by a brave few, that could make the silver screen sparkle again. 

Indian cinema’s dry run

“OTT is not a big threat. Admissions (ticket sales) are lower because of a lack of content,” says Bhuvanesh Mendiratta, managing director of Miraj Cinemas. “Why did Pushpa 2 and Stree 2 do well? People came out to watch them,” he says.

True enough. The real problem isn’t streaming — it’s simply the lack of theatrical releases. 

“The Hindi release calendar is blank. There are only three major releases in June — Housefull 5, Maa, and Sitaare Zameen Par,” says Shailesh Kapoor, CEO of Ormax Media.  

From 49 films in 2019, the total number of original Hindi films released on 1,000 or more screens has now dropped to 32 a year. 

It’s a vicious circle. Fewer screens have made it harder for films to recover costs, which in turn has discouraged investment and led to fewer films being produced. Streaming platforms offered quick money and an alternative distribution outlet, putting further pressure on cinemas. Much of this was worsened by the pandemic. The result: the main revenue engine for the Indian film industry is now in serious trouble. 

Of the industry’s total revenue of ₹20,000 crore, about two-thirds — or nearly ₹12,000 crore — came from theatres in 2024. This is the most crucial piece of the revenue pie because it determines the value that other segments, like streaming and television, can generate. 

But theatres are hurting. In 2024, Indians bought 883 million movie tickets, a 6 per cent drop from 2023, according to data from Ormax Media. The ‘theatre-going population’ stands at 122 million — only about 11 per cent of the country’s total population. In the US and Europe, it is anywhere from 50 to 80 per cent of the population. 

“The biggest hits have a footfall of about 35 million people — that’s just 2 per cent of our population. Where is the remaining 98 per cent watching our films? For a vast number of Indians, there’s simply no local cinema to go to,” said actor-producer Aamir Khan at WAVES recently. The world’s largest film-producing country has just 6 screens per million people, compared to around 125 in the US or 30 in China. 

Until more tickets are sold — meaning more people walking in, and more often — the business cannot expand. Only when ticket sales reach 1.2 to 1.5 billion annually can the industry’s scale begin to truly reflect India’s size.