Need stakeholders, not employees!

A representational image reflecting a declining audience in cinema halls. Pic/iStock

There's a definite crisis in the Hindi film industry. Films aren't working as they should. South Indian cinema has taken over the Hindi market.

OTT is the easier alternative to excel in. For one, every middleclass home has a big-screen TV. And you can eat your home-cooked snacks, fresh off the air fryer. We need audiences to come back in droves, into cinemas - to see Hindi films!

Why's that not happening, in the way it should? Here's the real deal, straight from logic.

I've witnessed enough actors/producers/directors escape from their one primary responsibility - you've got one job - to make films, that sell tickets!

Yes, independent cinema; yes, cinema as art; yes, cinema that has a voice; yes, noir; yes, abstract; yes, brave new cinema; yes, cinema for festivals; yes, niche cinema… Why not, yes, cinema, that sells tickets?

Because everybody in this generation knows cinema, that is taught at film school - cinema in theory, cinema as technology. Yet, technically, anybody can be a filmmaker, or actor, without that one basic qualification - knowledge of the audience!

They don't buy tickets themselves; why should their audience? Why not straightforward entertainment, then? Why not understand what made Raj Kapoor and Vijay Anand tick, with their audiences?

Their retrospective tributes ran to full houses across the country in 2024, defying all logic. Why not great music, created by human beans, not machines and synthesisers? Because everybody is evading the real reason for the collapse - simply, enough tickets are not being sold!

OTT is free; watching films on gadgets is free. But it's not only about the filmmakers. The other side of this coin is equally and completely scary!

Let's now look at the prohibitive cost of multiplex tickets, that is equally to blame for the decline in ticket sales.

A country where merely over two per cent of the total population pays income tax means that almost 98 per cent percent of the population earns an average of, roughly speaking, between Rs 15,000 to Rs 40,000 per month. How can they pay Rs 250, Rs 360, Rs 500, upwards, per ticket? They can't!

So, the multiplex chain caters to only about two per cent of the country; what about the rest? Are they not entitled to see big cinema on the big screen?

But 'plexes are shutting down the single screens, and most of the lower and middleclass audiences are watching films, four to seven weeks post the cinema release, on OTT. Or, especially the kids, hacking sites and watching films they pirate.

The 'plex sells popcorn and beverages at humongous prices. And mine their real-estate - by showing hours of ads, through parking charges, and asking producers/distributors to pay to show promotional material of their films.

The production sector doesn't know their audience; the exhibitors are not in the business of cinema, they're in the food and real estate business.

Now, what?

The basic difference between South Indian cinema industries and the Hindi film industry is one word - the bulk of that industry is made up of ‘stakeholders' of the business. The bulk of the Hindi film industry is made up of employees!

There are very few stakeholders left in Bollywood: Aditya Chopra, Rakesh Roshan, Suneel Darshan are three that I can name offhand. They own their films.

So, let's go back to the drawing board: let's create a simpler ticket-pricing package; let's keep our ownership, and become stakeholders. Let's have a stake in the success of each film we make, each 'plex we build, each deal we do! Let's be makers, and then go back to the cinemas.

The audience will come!

30-40
Estimated percentage of how much Bollywood's theatrical revenues dropped in 2024