Hyderabad: Next time you go to the theatre, it might seem a scene out of a sci-fi movie. Your ticket will be replaced with a QR code on your phone; the hand-held metal detector will have made way for a Door Frame Metal Detector, the kind used in airports; there will be a perspex glass between servers at the concessionaire stand and customers; and there will be cluster seating in the auditorium along with markers signalling the appropriate social distance. And of course everyone will have to carry their own sanitiser and face mask, and buy their own 3D glass to keep if they are watching a 3D movie.
Welcome to the new world of movie going, which going by optimistic estimates, should happen any time between June 15 and July 15. With big ticket releases such as Rohit Shetty's Rs 135-crore Sooryavanshi, starring Akshay Kumar, Ajay Devgn and Ranveer Singh; Kabir Khan's Rs 125 crore 83 starring Ranveer Singh as Kapil Dev; Rs 100-crore Radhe: Your Most Wanted Bhai starring Salman Khan, Bollywood can hardly wait. So impatient have some filmmakers become that they are ready to release their movies straight on OTT, leading to a particularly sharp response this week from Inox Leisure, which owns over 620 screens across India. Describing the producer of Gulabo Sitabo, the film that started the movement of global premieres on OTT, as a "fair-weather friend", the statement promised "retributive justice". The Producers Guild of India responded with equal ferocity citing mounting interest costs on financing, absence of insurance, uncertainty about the reopening of theatres, and money sunk into unused or abandoned sets as reason for the decision.
Chairman and MD Ajay Bijli of PVR, which controls 850 screens of the total 9,000 in the country, refuses to join the battle, speaking up instead for the magic of movies. "This is an aberration not a structural change," he says, adding that no producer would like to trade the big screen experience for streaming services. After all, he points out, 45 per cent of film revenue is still derived from theatres, with the rest being divided between broadcast and digital rights.
Box office revenue is still king, but many filmmakers believe the days of making small movies for the big screen are drawing to a close. The post corona world will be clearly divided into big bang, big Indian movies for the screen, with dubbed Hollywood movies contributing 10 per cent to the overall Indian box office, and smaller movies and long form series playing on streaming platforms.
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Filmmakers who can tell both kinds of stories are delighted. Take Anu Menon. She directed the first season of Amazon Prime's Four More Shots, and is also the director of Shakuntala Devi, starring Vidya Balan. Made for the big screen, it is now premiering on Amazon Prime (along with a slate of regional language movies starring a series of stellar actresses, such as Keerthy Suresh in Penguin, Jyotika in Ponmagal Vandhal and Aditi Rao Hydari in Sufiyum Sujatayum). "A series and a film have a totally different rhythm of storytelling. But I am a storyteller. I just go after how best to tell my story regardless of the medium." She is quite excited about her film reaching a wide audience--across 200 countries--in these tough times. As she says: "It's a film about a woman who fought against all odds to live her life to her fullest. It's a beautiful story about a mother and a daughter, the kind of stories people will want to watch with their families."
The other big question is when shooting can begin and how? There will certainly have to be hygiene and safety protocols in place to protect the cast and crew. There are several films which are almost done, halfway done, or were just about to start. Advait Chandan, who is directing Aamir Khan in the Forrest Gump remake, Lal Singh Chadha, says his actors were in the zone and the shoot was going well, with the big Kargil war setpiece and a few days shoot in Mumbai and Delhi pending. Slated for a December release, he still hopes to make it in time, though there is a lot of VFX work left. Dibakar Banerjee had a day's shooting left on his Netflix movie based on three generations of a Kashmiri family, while Anurag Kashyap had four days of shooting left on his young love story. They are all waiting to get back, while Karan Johar who had constructed two sets in Mumbai for his mammoth Rs 250-crore Mughal epic Takht is waiting to get started.
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But in the current environment, everything is a variable and though the film industry employs at least five million people indirectly, it is not top of the agenda for either the state or Central governments. Many theatres are in malls which adds a second layer of danger to the movie going experience. In the US, Christoper Nolan hopes the nationwide release of his much awaited Tenet on July 17 will bring audiences back to the theatres, but the industry there works quite differently. The US has four major studios and big exhibitor chains. All it takes for decisions to be implemented is a few phone calls, unlike in India where producers are much more fragmented and the number of movies higher--between 1,000 and 1,200 a year, compared to 200 in the US.
But that also means the appetite for movies is far greater. Will it take a mere virus to destroy this?
(Kaveree Bamzai, a recipient of the Chevening Scholarship, has formerly worked with The Times of India and The Indian Express and has been the editor of India Today. She is also a member of the CII National Committee for Women's Empowerment and Committee on Media and Entertainment)
