Movie goers had been reluctant to return to movie halls and so the story ‘PVR – INOX Makes Big BO Return With Blockbuster’ [Bus Std 31 August 2023] was a welcome change. The big success of Gadar 2 followed by the even bigger success of Jawan [released on 7 September 2023] is probably a sign that movie goers are back in movie halls in large numbers.
The long drought of Bollywood hits has evoked many comments including those that said that OTT has swallowed the multiplex audience. The criticism also centered around the inability of the film producers to understand the changing tastes of movie goers. The widely held wisdom was that South Indian movie makers seem to understand the pulse of the audience a lot better. There may be some logic in those arguments but there has been a bigger factor at play.
Hollywood is facing its own set of problems and The New York Times [July 16, 2023] had a story titled ‘In Hollywood, the Strikes Are Just Part of a Greater Economic Problem’. The article said that ticket sales in US and Canada are down 21% from the same period in 2019. Movie goers were not willing to go back to movie halls even in the US and Canada. This is despite the fact that Hollywood, over the last decade, has managed to create and nurture a very loyal following for certain genres of movies and calling them ‘Universe’. Even the ostensibly surefire Indiana Jones franchise movie did not evoke the enthusiasm that it was supposed to. August has been a good month and we will come to that in a moment.
What was ailing movie goers around the world? What will make them come back?
If we take India, we saw South Indian movies getting off the block early. Why did that happen? Was it because the film makers there are more clued into the tastes of their viewers or something else.
When I started my career in advertising in the late 1970s, I was also entrusted with the task of doing media plans for my clients. Those days cinema advertising was an important part of any media plan. What fascinated me then was the dramatically larger number of movie halls in states like Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. In comparison, states like UP and Rajasthan had very low number of movie halls compared to their population. The media studies also showed that while almost 30% of adults in TN and AP visited a movie hall every month, the number for UP was less than 10%. As I sit on the board of a company involved in the digitization of cinema halls, I am fascinated to see that the situation has not changed much even in the 2020s. Per capita availability of movie halls [and seats] in South India is even now way above the per capita screens in the North. This is despite the fact that multiplexes are coming up rapidly in Tier 2 towns across India. What has this done to movie viewing?
For the South Indian consumer going to a movie hall is something that is hard wired in his/her brain. [Little wonder M Night Shyamalan has observed ‘Movies are Sacred’]. He/she remembers visiting movie halls as a kid with their family. And this habit continues as they grow up to become earning member of the family. During the pandemic there was a fear about going to movie halls. Remember movie halls and theaters were probably the last to open up. There was a palpable fear in going to movies. This fear has kept movie goers away from movie halls not just in India, but also in all countries of the world. PwC has even predicted [NYT 16, July 2023] that global ticket sales will reach 7.2 billion by 2027; incidentally total attendance was 7.9 billion in 2019 [I am sure PwC experts are recalculating these numbers now].
The first set of consumers to throng movie halls were in TN and AP/TL. It is possible that South Indian film makers knew that they had to break the inertia and hence offered films that appealed to both the multiplex and the single screen audiences. Incidentally these films even worked in other parts of India.
From the news around Gadar 2 and Jawan it appears that movie goers in other parts of India are now finally over their inertia and willing to go to movie halls.
It is also interesting to note that with the success of Oppenheimer and Barbie, even the US / Canada movie audiences are back in big numbers making Bloomberg [Business Line 6 Sept 2023] say ‘In the emerging post-pandemic era, most aspects of life have returned to normal. Movie goers are flocking to cinemas, vacationers jammed airports for summer travel and kids are returning to classrooms. The one thing that has remained stubbornly fraught: the world of work’. In a curious twist of fate the two biggest Hollywood hits of the year were not part of any long running themes or ‘universes’.
Movie goers are back. But this does not guarantee all films will be hits. Movie makers will have to invest in understanding the changing tastes of movie goers, in multiplexes and single screens, in order to improve the chance of success.
Appeared originally in Business Standard Sept 2023