Covid-ravaged Indian cinema's plot falters, will take years to pick up

The pandemic has devastated the film business. It will take years to pick up the pieces. Part 1 of a two-part series

It has been a tough year,” sighs Siddharth Roy-Kapur, president, Producers Guild of India. He can say that again. About two-thirds of the Indian film industry’s revenue was wiped out last year. From Rs 19,100 crore in 2019, the world’s largest film producing industry now stands at Rs 7,200 crore, thanks to the pandemic.
 
Theatres, the first to shut down and the last to reopen, took the biggest hit. Ticket sales slumped to 400 million, less than a third of 2019. Hundreds of thousands of daily-wagers who form part of the industry’s 700,000-strong workforce lost their jobs.
 
According