‘South emerges the new hero in India’s cinema landscape’ screamed the headline of a story that traced the box office collection trends of movies post-Covid (Business Standard 19 April 2025). The article also presented some interesting figures about the number of movie screens (cinemas) in India.
Question arises, how important is movie going in the life of an average Indian. When I started my life in advertising in 1979, I was a client servicing executive who was also tasked with the job of media planning. Those were the days of calculators and the large bound editions of the National Readership Surveys. What fascinated me was the stark difference between moviegoing habits of the south Indian and the north Indian consumers. Almost 50% of urban adults in south India visited the cinema halls every month. The number for north India was less than 15%. Those were the days of single screen cinemas and cinema advertising was a monopoly run by a company called Blaze Advertising. Again going over the list of movie halls provided by Blaze one could see that south India had a lot more cinemas, better quality halls, than north India. A trivia: probably the first multi-screen cinema complex was in Mount Road Madras, the Safire complex which had four screens, now no more. Coming to the disparity in viewing habits, was it just supply creating its own demand? More cinema halls so more people visited cinemas? Or was something more at work?
The question of disparity of the number of cinema halls, between north and south India, was brought out by the abovementioned article too. For instance, UP has only 601 cinema screens (EY FICCI Report 2025), while Tamil Nadu has 1,158 and AP+Telengana have 1,771 screens. Multiplex revolution has had no impact in the difference between south and north Indian screen population.
Of the total screens in India (9927), multiplexes account for only 40% though their share of collection is higher. Single screens still command a significant presence in south India and that may be a reason for the resilience of the south cinema business.
When Covid hit there was widespread gloom in the cinema industry. OTTs were having a merry time. Why will a consumer go to a cinema and watch a movie when he can see it all, without any trouble at home? The recovery of the medium was expected to take a long time. Incidentally the global movie industry is yet to hit the pre-Covid collection numbers. But south India cinemas bounced back rather quickly, even delivering national hits one after the other. Hindi movies that accounted for 45% of national box office in 2018 have dropped to 40% in 2024; even Malayalam movies have moved from 5% to 10% in the same period.
Two questions remain. What did the south film makers do that Hindi film makers missed out on? And what is the reason behind this huge difference between per-capita screen availability in the south vs the north?
Experts have said that the south Indian film makers have kept their focus on the single screen cinema goer. They have kept their finger on the pulse of the single screen cinema fan, who goes to movies once a month or more, to forget his weekly chores. And the cinema fans have repaid them with their wallet. The north movie makers have got carried away with the multiplex glamour and did not tailor their fare. The multiplex audience was now juggling between the paradox of choice on OTT channels versus the cinema screen. It should however be admitted that Hindi did have a revival moment in 2023 with some mega hits like Jawan and Pathan. Will Hindi movie makers find their magic touch again in 2025? At least till April 2025 they have not found their rhythm.
Coming to the second question, why is there this huge difference in the per-capital availability of screens? Legend has it that Madras Presidency had a governor who encouraged the building of cinema halls as a way of improving government propaganda. This led to a spurt in the number of cinema halls in the old Madras Presidency. One thing led to another. More cinemas led to increased cinema going. This probably led to more cinema halls being built. A positive cycle started spinning. And has continued spinning. I suppose the growth of cinema halls in Madras Presidency had its own ripple effects in neighbouring states of Malabar and Mysore. Post independence both in Tamil Nadu and erstwhile Andhra Pradesh the political parties were cinema friendly, and that helped. The north did not have such a positive cycle. And even with the advent of multiplexes the gap between south and north has not diminished.
All is not lost. China had less cinema screens than India till twenty years ago. In a shocking burst of scale China moved from just 4400 screens in 2005 to 90,000+ by 2024.
Will we see this happen in India? Is there a need to create a more economical multiplex experiences? Is there a need to create innovative ticketing options? Many questions remain, till those are answered let us enjoy the movies masti magic of south Indian cinema.
Appeared originally in Business Standard April 2025