Indian film industry shakes off its jinx

Producer and film business expert Girish Johar said post-Covid, the English-speaking audiences returned to theatres faster, evident in the mild success of films like ‘Top Gun’ and ‘Avatar.’ However, the current boom in film business is the result of coming together of films that catered to all audience segments, Johar said

When IMAX Corporation opened a new multiplex with Broadway Cinemas in Coimbatore in late June, it had no inkling that it’ll do brisk business in July. “Being a Tier-2 town, people had cautioned against opening an IMAX theatre. But there were no tickets available for the two back-to-back Hollywood films – ‘Mission Impossible’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ – released in July,” Preetham Daniel, vice president APAC – Theatre Development, IMAX Corporation, told HT. IMAX, the Canadian company, operates large-format, high-resolution theatre screens in India.

Indian film industry shakes off its jinx

While ‘MI’ did business worth ₹10 crore for IMAX, ‘Oppenheimer’ surpassed expectations at ₹ 40 crore, Daniel said. Overall, ‘MI’ made ₹ 100 crore in India while ‘Oppenheimer’ hit ₹ 150 crore in box office collections. However, the months of July and August augured well for Hindi cinema too with people flocking theatres to watch Alia Bhatt’s ‘Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani,’ Akshay Kumar’s ‘OMG 2’ and Sunny Deol’s ‘Gadar 2,’ giving a much-needed push to the floundering Mumbai film industry.

Producer and film business expert Girish Johar said post-Covid, the English-speaking audiences returned to theatres faster, evident in the mild success of films like ‘Top Gun’ and ‘Avatar.’ However, the current boom in film business is the result of coming together of films that catered to all audience segments, Johar said.

“The urban affluent viewers got ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ while the action fans thronged ‘Mission Impossible.’ ‘Rocky Aur Rani’ and ‘OMG 2’ catered to the upper middle classes while ‘Gadar 2’ took the mass market by storm,” he added. “I keep repeating that Bollywood had neglected the masses for a while. There were no hardcore mass films catering to the ‘KGF’ and ‘RRR’ audiences. Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘Pathan’ was the first one to cater to them earlier this year,” Johar said. Now ‘Gadar 2’ is expected to make ₹ 500 crore at the box office.

Although IMAX’s Daniel said there is no proven theory on why viewers have returned to theatres, the one big change has been the presence of older audiences who were missing since Covid. “We noticed older people coming out to watch films. I think the fear of Covid has finally gone,” he said.

Binitesh Baruri, creative producer (films) at Locomotive Global Media believes that sometimes the success of one film rubs off on the others. “We are creatures of habit. If we go to theatre one week, love the popcorn and the ambience, we are keen to repeat the experience. That’s how audiences start coming back,” said Baruri.

Film experts said that some of the earlier films failed as they were greenlit before Covid. Though not all post-Covid films flopped (‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’ and ‘Kashmir Files’ worked), the fact is films need to be contemporary. “If I make a film right now, and then release it two years later, it’s going to feel dated. During the time lag audiences may come across content with similar ideas in films, on OTT or television,” Baruri said.

The somewhat bogus narrative that was built saying southern cinema is better than Hindi cinema also made Bollywood insecure, Baruri said. “When films come with their own rooted sensibilities and narratives then they’re all fantastic. There is enough space for all of them to work simultaneously,” he added.

Daniel said for a long time the belief was that cinema is not the place to go while OTT is where everything will turn up at the house. “Now that quality content has come out, people have realised that there is a separate type of films that you can watch on OTT and some quality content has to be consumed on the large screen,” he said.

Fortunately, the industry may be shaking off its bad luck with a strong line-up of upcoming English language and Hindi cinema. In the offing are SRK’s ‘Jawan,’ Prabhas’s ‘Salaar,’ Salman Khan’s ‘Tiger 3’ and Vijay Sethupati’s ‘Merry Christmas,’ among others.

Viewers today are open to diverse content. “To an extent I’d say a ‘thank you’ to OTT because it was able to put that format on everybody’s mobile devices and tablets irrespective of whether they lived in a city or Tier-2 -3 location. Audiences have matured and are highly experimental. They’re watching Hollywood, Bollywood, southern language and Korean content and they’re totally okay with that.

But have they broken the OTT habit to visit cinemas? It may be too early to assume that. But they have definitely stepped out this time.