Bold Moves Must For Silver Screen To Sparkle Again

More screens, more films, and longer windows will convert to more people watching, assuming they know a film is releasing, points out Vanita Kohli-Khandekar.

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The shorter the window, usually 2-6 weeks, the less likely it is that audiences will walk into the theatre to see a small or medium-budget film such as 12th Fail or Laapataa Ladies, which is more about the story than about star power or histrionics, a la Pushpa 2.

With Sitaare Zameen Par, which hit theatres on June 20, Aamir Khan, who has been critical of the short window between a film's theatrical and OTT release, has put his money where his mouth is. Another person who has taken it upon himself to help turn the industry's fortunes around is SVF Entertainment's cofounder Mahendra Soni.

His firm is working to revive cinema screens in West Bengal, where their count had fallen from 400 in 2000 to 140 in 2015. SVF, which has produced films like Chokher Bali, Raincoat, and Chitrangada, mapped the state's 23 districts and started building, managing, or acquiring screens. Bolpur, Purulia, Krishnanagar, Narendrapur, Baruipur, Jalpaiguri are among the 23 West Bengal towns where it now manages or owns 53 screens.

The count is expected to go up to 75 in the financial year ending March 2026. Meanwhile, the overall number of screens in the state has gone up to nearly 200. "Kolkata is multilingual, but outside of the city, only Bengali films work," says Soni. "Our collections were dipping not because the city wasn't working, but because there weren't enough theatres outside of Kolkata."

SVF Entertainment, which had a revenue of Rs 300 crore (Rs 3 billion) in FY24, has distributed over 1,500 films, of which it has made 250. Its share of the net box office collection in West Bengal has doubled from under 10 per cent to 20 per cent.

"Our screens emerged in places that had no cinemas," says Soni. In the city of Chinsurah, for instance, box office collections went up from zero to Rs 15 lakh (Rs 1.5 million) for a single film.

"This is pure additive revenue."