Does the strategy of focusing more on premium audiences pay rich dividends to exhibitors?
Cinema Lovers Day on May 31. Then, September 20 was celebrated as National Cinema Day. On both days, multiplexes capped ticket price at Rs99. This was followed by re-releasing old films which stakeholders in the exhibition industry said would be an ongoing strategy if the pipeline of Hindi films is not strikingly good enough to attract footfalls in theatres. In a sharp contrast to the prevalent business strategy of multiplexes, Mukta A2 Cinemas capped prices of food and beverages at Rs99.
Quite expectedly, these initiatives have borne fruits. It is estimated that 30 lakh tickets were sold across languages and formats on the National Cinema Day itself. Even Hindi films which were re-released in theatres recorded higher collections than when they were released. A prime example is the Hindi film Tumbbad, which collected over Rs36 crore on its re-release. This is much higher than close to Rs16 crore the film collected when it was released in 2018. A key reason for this is exhibitors offered tickets in the range of Rs110-150. All these favourable developments have transpired when fresh films in the Hindi film industry are failing at the box office.
This shows that when tickets are priced economically people come to theatres irrespective whether a film is old or new.
This fact leads to a key question: Does the excessive focus on the premium audience pay rich dividends to exhibitors?
Watching movies in theatres has largely been associated with the masses. There are two telling observations of two critically acclaimed
