Business Desk, ETV Bharat: Though cinema halls have been permitted to reopen in India with 50% capacity under the Unlock 5.0 guidelines, movie theatres are struggling hard to attract footfalls and are operating with bare minimum occupancy levels.
Talking to ETV Bharat, Alok Tandon, CEO of INOX Leisure Ltd, one of India’s largest multiplex chain operators with 147 multiplexes and 626 screens in 68 cities, said that their theatres are witnessing single-digit occupancies in most of the states.
“We are yet to reach the usual operational benchmarks, largely due to the absence of fresh content, which is a key to the revival of the cinema exhibition sector,” said Tandon, adding: “The impact of lack of new movies is visibly evident with single-digit occupancies observed in most of the states.”
“The only exception is the state of West Bengal, where the turnouts have been fantastic, due to new Bengali movies getting released,” added Tandon.
The current situation clearly highlights the importance of new movies for bringing back crowds to cinemas. However, content producers are still reluctant to release new movies as they wait for seating guidelines to be relaxed and for all the major states to allow cinema operations.
Notably, though the central government had permitted cinema halls to reopen from 15 October with 50% capacity, but many states are yet to give a green signal to cinema exhibitors. Maharashtra, one of the key markets for movie exhibition business, allowed opening up cinema halls only last week, and is yet to issue SOP (standard operating procedure) for the same.
“Cinema industry currently is caught in a precarious situation, where it is getting impacted by the lack of new movie content on one side, and producers’ unwillingness to release new movies till the relaxation of guidelines and reopening of cinemas in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Punjab on the other,” noted Tandon.
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He added: “Content producers have expressed their concerns on seat allocation being limited to 50% and major markets like Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Rajasthan and Punjab still not allowing cinemas to operate.”
Outlook promising
However, Tandon is hopeful of business picking up in coming months. “Come festivities, when the new titles are available, we are sure of achieving our healthy occupancies. The line-up in of other Indian languages also looks pretty exciting with loads of new titles in Bengali, Punjabi, Tamil, Kannada and Tamil,” he said.
“We are also witnessing a very interesting trend… movies of other Indian languages are going to get released in 4 to 5 other languages as well, adding to our content options,” added Tandon.
For now, Inox said it is relying on library content which has seen success in other global markets. It has also launched services like private screening where customers can book an entire theatre for just Rs 2,999.
Inox last week reported a consolidated net loss of Rs 67.83 crore for September quarter as against a net profit of Rs 35.13 crore in the year-ago period due to complete closure of the film exhibition business during the period.
Revenue from operations was down 99.93% to Rs 36 lakh during the quarter compared with Rs 519.94 crore a year ago.
