Content is king as viewers troop back to cinemas
NEW DELHI : The theatrical business is starting to show green shoots of recovery buoyed by a slate of successful films from Hollywood such as Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One, Oppenheimer and Barbie and Hindi romantic comedy Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani. Theatre owners and producers say that the success, especially of the seemingly niche American titles underlines the willingness of audiences to come to theatres, as long as there is compelling content.
Similar success stories have been seen in Punjabi and Marathi cinema where Carry On Jatta 3 and Baipan Bhari Deva have done well despite being made on a smaller scale, proving that Bollywood needs to focus more on character development and storytelling. “Our business is entirely content-driven and our experience over the past 15 months since the last lockdown has been that while people may be apprehensive otherwise, if there is good content on offer, they are coming back to cinemas in good numbers," Sanjeev Kumar Bijli, executive director, PVR Inox Ltd said.
While sleeper hits have returned to Hindi cinema only now with a small-scale film like Zara Hat Ke Zara Bach Ke minting over ₹87 crore, markets such as the South have done well not only with dubbed versions of entertainers like KGF: Chapter 2 and Kantara finding draw across India but even movies like Bro (Telugu), Baby (Telugu) and Maamannan (Tamil) resonating, albeit in their home states. A delay in Bollywood releases in the past few months may be attributed to filmmakers delaying their films in order to get the product completely right, Bijli said.
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