The first, Ormax Media’s Box Office Report 2025 states that the Indian box office hit ₹13,397 crore, growing 13 per cent in 2025 over the previous year. That is good news because it has been stuck in the range of ₹11,000 to ₹12,000 crore for over five years. Note, the report is only about box-office revenues, which come from ticket sales in India. If you add streaming, TV, music and overseas box-office revenue, the Indian movie business was estimated at ₹22,000 crore in revenues in 2025. Ticket sales bring in over 60 per cent of revenue for cinema, making it the most important part of the business.
However, much of this growth came from the 20 per cent rise in average ticket prices, not from selling more tickets. From a high of 943 million tickets in 2023, actual tickets sold were down to 832 million in 2025. The last theatrical sizing that Ormax did in 2024 showed that 157 million Indians went to the theatre regularly — meaning they saw an average of five films a year. That still leaves a good billion-plus Indians who don’t go. Why?
“Content” as most people are wont to quip is not an answer. Millions of people stepped out for Dhurandhar, Stree 2, Jawan or Kantara a Legend — Chapter 1, among other films. In a country that makes 1,500-2,000 films a year, not every film can be a crowd-puller.
The reason is because there aren’t any screens for a large mass of Indians.
About 20 years back, over 240 million people went to the theatre regularly. From 12,000 in the early ’90s, India is now down to less than 9,000 screens. The world’s largest film-producing country has just over six screens per million people, compared with 109 in the United States and 64 in China. Even if all the 157 million cinema-going people saw Dhurandhar on the big screen, it was still watched by only 11 per cent of the country. Of the 19,000 pin codes in India, 16,350 have no screens at all.
Some (not all) of these numbers are from EY’s The Story of Film Exhibition in India for the National Association of Film Exhibitors in India, the second report on the state of the movie business. It points out something this reporter and many others have been saying for years now — there are no screens accessible to a large part of India. The 16,350 pin codes are not the ones you and I reside in with access to top multiplexes. These are not pin codes with full internet penetration and bandwidth-guzzling devices aplenty. These are places that rely on basic smartphones to watch old movies on YouTube or take a DD Freedish connection because there is nothing else for entertainment.
Take West Bengal, for instance. The number of screens in the state had fallen from about 400 in 2000 to 140 in 2015. That is when SVF (Chokher Bali, Raincoat, etc), a local studio facing falling box office revenues decided to take matters into its own hands. It mapped the 23 districts of West Bengal and started building, managing or acquiring screens. Bolpur, Purulia, Krishnanagar, Narendrapur, Baruipur, Jalpaiguri are among the 23 towns in the state where it now manages or owns 53 screens, going to 75 by March 2026. As the screen count has risen to almost 200 now, SVF’s share of the net box-office collection in West Bengal has doubled, from under 10 per cent to 20 per cent. These are people rediscovering the joy of watching films on the big screen.
The EY report lists a number of short-term measures such as letting theatres operate 24x7 and extending the 5 per cent goods and services tax on tickets up to ₹300. Much of this will increase ticket sales as events like the National Cinema Day when ticket prices are slashed across the country show. But the long-term solution remains building screens. That is a capital-intensive, long-gestation business that makes even the best of firms groan at the red-tapism of permissions.
Among the long-term suggestions, which this column has often pushed, is giving a tax holiday for theatres in pin codes with no screens. At the turn of the millennium, the Maharashtra government gave a 10-year tax holiday. That is what triggered the multiplex boom in India. More screens mean more revenue, more tax income and jobs. The EY report estimates that at 20,000 screens, an additional 125,000 people would be employed along with the 138,000 currently.
There has been much talk of Indian cinema’s soft power globally. But our presence in the global market is a blip, compared to, say, Hollywood or Korea. The low-hanging fruit is the home market. The Indian movie business has remained at $1.5-$2 billion (₹16,000-₹20,000 crore) crore level for years. It is only with 20,000-30,000 screens and a market size of $5-$10 billion (₹41,500-₹83,000 crore) will it be big enough to take on the world.
 "CINEMA, CINEMA HALL, BOX OFFICE, MULTIPLEX")