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“It is very important that every month one blockbuster is there. There are four weeks you would need to fill up in terms of occupancy at least upwards of 25%-30% for a very good number,” Abneesh Roy, Executive Director , Edelweiss Securities, told ET Now.
Multiplexes need one good movie every month for the industry to do well but that has not been the case in recent months, he added.
The Flop Show
SBI in a recent report said it believes all Bollywood needs is just one blockbuster that could ebb the pain from a string of flops which several experts attribute to a combination of factors, including the industry’s increasing disconnect with the masses, lack of creativity, faulty storytelling, too much emphasis on stars and boycott calls against stars and films.
Of the 26 Bollywood releases this year, 20 – or 77% – have been flops, defined as losing half or more of their investment, according to the Koimoi website, which tracks industry data. That’s about double the failure rate of 39% in 2019, before the pandemic forced hundreds of millions of Indians to wean themselves off cinemas, for decades the bastion of Bollywood and its main source of revenue.
As against 70-80 movies released every year in Hindi language and collection between Rs 3,000-5,500 crore, 61 movies have been released since January last year till August 11 in Hindi, including original and south or English movies dubbed in Hindi. They have collected merely 3,200 crore rupees, of which 48% came from 18 dubbed movies, the report stated citing data from Koimoi.com.
Roy said that the last big Hindi movie was The Kashmir Files and despite star cast many movies have failed to be hits.
Buying Entertainment
“This kind of consumer behaviour is seen when a customer goes, spends a lot of money and then the content does not click with him. Then he decided to go back only when he was sure about the content,” Roy added.
What Roy reflects upon is the thought of any consumer who would look to get the best return on his money invested for good entertainment. That is sacrosanct from any consumer’s perspective, be it for good food at a restaurant or for movies, which Bollywood has largely failed to dish out at a time when the industry was looking for a rope to get out of pandemic blues.
Tickets at multiplexes are even sold upwards of Rs 2,000 per head for premium experience. For instance, a ticket for Brahmastra in 3D at PVR in Delhi’s Ambience Mall for Saturday evening is priced at Rs 2,200. Inox Leisure is selling Insignia tickets for the movie at about Rs 1,650 per seat. Even for the non-premium segment, ticket prices can go up to Rs 1,000 per seat. Add to that the bloated prices of popcorn and cola if one wants to buy them.
As against a 5-7% hike in ticket prices every year, PVR this year raised ticket prices by up to 23% on account of inflation, cost of labour and redevelopment costs. The multiplexes are also increasingly dependent on the ad revenues. PVR CEO Gautam Dutta had told ET that they run 16–18 minutes of advertising.
Ramesh Sippy, the director of Sholay which is still seen as one of the biggest blockbusters in Bollywood history, had told Mint years back that in earlier times most of the audience paid a minimal amount for the seats and got the maximum out of cinema. But, in the multiplex, cinema has lost that audience completely partly because they simply can’t afford it or because they can watch it on their mobile or on pirated platforms.
Faltering Movie Content
Edelweiss’ Roy flagged that since many movies did not release during Covid, some content is old. The rusted content will not work for audiences who have got the exposure of better content across foreign and regional movies amid galloping pace of OTT adoption.
The average rating of the Hindi movies since January last year has been 5.9, compared to 7.3 rating for the 18 dubbed movies. An extra point IMDB rating leads to 17 crore rupees of more collections, according to SBI.
Course correction is happening in terms of content. Now producers and script writers are going back to the table in terms of what the customer wants. Hopefully, we will see better movies, Roy said.
A Tough Q2 & Road Ahead
There is a near-term concern on how the fiscal second quarter numbers for the multiplexes and industry will turn out to be as the first two months have been “very tough,” he said.
The street will need to rejig the numbers for Q2, while they also await the business numbers of Brahmastra that was released yesterday and was touted to be a possible game changer to break the Bollywood jinx.
“There will be cut in numbers because first two months in Q2 have been weak. If Brahmastra also is weak, then maybe definitely Q2 is looking weak,” he said. “But in terms of festive spends, we are quite optimistic and Vikram Vedha definitely is before the festive season. In H2, we have a good line up of movies.”
Nonetheless, be it an industry stakeholder or a movie buff, everyone will want the blockbusters to come back in a heroic avatar. Everyone will want to visit the giant screen and relish the experience of the narrated story – be it about something like Masaan or Rang de Basanti that may leave you seated still and pondering even after the movie has ended, or be it the family dramas or even Dabangg that will naturally incite the
seetis, taalis and crazy dance moves in front of the enigmatic screens.
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