Screen dream Bollywood star looks to YouTube to reach outpriced audience

Over a decade ago, Aamir Khan began to be troubled. Even as one of Bollywood's most beloved and bankable superstars for more than three decades - once dubbed the "biggest movie star in the world" - he realised that only tiny numbers of people across India were watching his films in cinemas.

- Hannah Ellis-Petersen

Despite widespread adoration for Indian cinema and its outsized influence on society, just 2% to 3% of the nation's 1.4bn people now watch films in theatres.

One long-standing issue is access, in particular in rural areas. Khan, 60, who has starred in, directed and produced some of Bollywood's most famous films, spent years trying to develop a plan to build thousands of low-cost cinemas in India's rural hinterland where films could be beamed in via satellite. However, the initiative was stymied by relentless bureaucracy.

Cost, too, has become a major obstacle. In the past, going to the cinema was a vibrant, often rowdy communal affair. Families would pack out single-screen cinemas amid cheering and dancing, with tickets costing just a few rupees. But as multiplexes have come to dominate, it has become a luxury experience, with tickets now regularly costing upwards of 500 rupees - unaffordable to the majority of families in India.

"The reality is that theatres are no longer a mass medium, it's become an upper-class medium. And as filmmakers, we haven't done enough to change that and reach that other 97% of the population," said Khan.