Content creators, small and big, should brace for worsening headwinds
PVR and Inox, the combined entity now accounts for a massive 43% of gross box office collections for Hindi movies. Pre-pandemic, PVR which ran the largest chain of halls, accounted for 24% of these collections, and Inox, which had not merged with PVR, had a 15% share. This means that the fight for getting prime slots for movie screenings is likely to get intense and multiplexes will flex their muscle to eventually pay film producers a lower amount or charge them higher for various ancillary services.
Small and independent film producers are likely to bear the brunt of this. For satellite revenues, the story is no different. At the time of writing, there are four large players in the fray; Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Viacom18 and Disney Star.
While we may not know who is going to marry who, it seems fairly certain that there will be two weddings and four hitherto independent buyers of satellite rights will become two. Again, bargaining power will shift to buyers of satellite rights to the detriment of movie producers, especially the small and independent ones. During the pandemic years, OTT platforms became an important source of monetization for movie producers.
Covid lockdowns induced an explosion in viewership of online content, and these platforms spent lavishly on acquiring new content to satiate this demand. A few things have changed since. Post re-opening, viewership metrics for most platforms have suffered, and more importantly, interest rates globally have been substantially hiked.
Money has a price again and a steep one at that. It is not surprising that Netflix Inc, which was part of the original ‘FANG’ quartet, has since lost its membership of this tech high-flyers club. After growing a massive 52% in 2021,
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