Vishek Chauhan, a veteran exhibitor who has seen a number of cycles of the theatre enterprise in India from the Eighties until date, explains that the genesis of survival of theatres lies not solely in displaying movies however in bringing folks collectively for a shared expertise. Chauhan, who’s the CEO of Roopbani Cinema, a Bihar-based single-screen theatre, in his ebook Cinemas Endlessly: How Film Theatres Fought Again Towards TV, Residence Video, Streaming―and Survived Two Pandemics, foresees the expansion of India’s exhibition business in constructing the primary good display within the a whole bunch of under-screened cities the place the viewers is giant, hungry and at present ignored.
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What elements have led to the survival of film theatres regardless of so many onslaughts difficult their relevance?
The sincere reply is that each obituary for the cinema misinterpret what a cinema is. Folks assumed we had been within the enterprise of displaying movies. We’re not. We’re within the enterprise of gathering folks. Tv, video, DVDs, streaming — every delivered a movie higher, cheaper and extra conveniently to your lounge. None of them delivered a room. The collective gasp, the shared laughter, the stranger subsequent to you crying on the identical body — that has no home-delivery model.
There’s additionally a tough business motive the commerce understands nicely. Theatrical remains to be the marquee that units a movie’s value in every single place else. A movie’s streaming worth, its satellite tv for pc worth, its cultural footprint — all of it’s priced off the opening weekend. Kill the theatre and you do not simply lose a window. You lose an occasion that provides the entire pyramid its worth. Producers know this. It is a motive why each few years the very individuals who declared us useless come again to launch their largest movie on our screens first.
Which has been the hardest section of survival for film theatres in India?
It was the pandemic. The yr 2020 was the sharpest single shock now we have ever taken — in a single day, each display within the nation went to zero income with mounted prices nonetheless operating. However should you ask me which section did essentially the most lasting harm it was the lengthy assault of the late Eighties and Nineties.And other people misremember that period as one risk at a time. It was not. Tv and residential video exploded at virtually the identical second. The VCR and the cassettes arriving simply as color TV was reaching each middle-class drawing room. After which the cable got here roaring proper behind them.
So, inside a single decade, the Indian family was hit by an enormous inflow of low cost and in-home leisure all of sudden. That pile-up is what broke the again of the one screens. It was a sluggish bleed. It killed extra theatres than any virus— hundreds of them shut, quietly, city by city, and most by no means reopened. My family lived by way of it.
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The distinction from the pandemic is instructive. The Covid interval was a shock we recovered. It’s because the underlying want by no means went away. The day we reopened theatres folks got here again. The tv-video-cable wave was extra harmful exactly as a result of it was gradual and relentless. It satisfied a whole technology of exhibitors that give up was the one choice. Those who survived had been those who refused to consider the obituary being written about them.
How dramatic has been the shift and the place will we stand as on date?
Right here is the determine that surprises folks: India’s whole display rely has barely moved. Based on the FICCI-EY 2026 report, India had about 10,033 screens in 2025 — up simply 1% on the yr, South India down 1% and the remainder of the nation up 3%. We’re sitting at roughly the identical ten-thousand-odd screens now we have had for years. So, on the floor, nothing occurred.
However that flat quantity hides an entire change of the guard. A decade and a half again, virtually all screens had been single screens — they fell from round 10,000 in 2010 after which their numbers fell additional to below 7000 by 2019. Subsequently, their enterprise was impacted. Even in 2025, Andhra Pradesh alone misplaced 54 screens and Karnataka 29, whereas Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Kerala and Maharashtra added new ones. My very own estimate after speaking to fellow exhibitors is that nicely over a thousand single screens have gone darkish prior to now 5 years. Multiplexes have added a roughly comparable quantity in the identical window. So, the full holds close to 10,000. However the composition of the Indian exhibition business has flipped from single screens to multiplexes.
A ballpark estimate factors out that of the full screens about 10,000 multiplex screens are about 6,000–6,500 and rising. Single screens may be within the vary of three,500–4,000. Single screens are nonetheless shrinking particularly within the South. The crossover has already occurred. India is now not a single-screen nation.
And right here is the quantity that ought to maintain the entire business awake. In India, greater than 16,000 pin codes haven’t any cinema display in any respect. Solely round 10% of Indians go to a cinema in a yr though 81% say they might quite watch a movie in a theatre. We’re not an over-screened nation dying of extra. We’re a drastically under-screened one ravenous in the midst of its personal demand.
Will the IMAX revolution and different technical improvements form the way in which tales are chosen and made?
They already are. That is each alternative and threat. Giant-format and premium screens have created a transparent lane for “big-screen-worthy” movie: the spectacle, the occasion, an image which diverts consideration of a view away from a cellphone. Filmmakers at the moment are consciously designing for that scale. That’s wholesome. It provides theatres a motive to exist that no lounge can match.
The chance right here is homogenisation. If the one movies deemed value a theatrical push are loud, VFX-heavy tentpoles, then we’re starved of mid-budget human drama that has all the time been the soul of our cinema. Expertise ought to broaden the menu and never shrink it. Smartest exhibitors and producers will use these codecs to make theatres a vacation spot for occasion, whereas fiercely defending house for smaller movies which nonetheless deserve a collective viewers.
What’s your view on theatres specializing in making a hotel-like atmosphere? Is {that a} deterrent given the excessive value of a theatre outing?
Premiumisation is an excellent technique for the markets which may take up it. Recliners, gourmand meals, and luxurious providers rescued the economics of metro multiplexes. However the business made one quiet, pricey error alongside the way in which. In chasing a premium buyer, we deserted the mass viewers. We priced out atypical households of the very behavior of going to theatres.
The long run shouldn’t be luxurious versus affordability. You want the Rs500 luxurious seat in Mumbai and the Rs100 seat in a small city. It’s segmentation. They’re two fully totally different companies serving two fully totally different audiences. The most important untapped viewers on this nation shouldn’t be sitting in multiplexes. They’re in tier-3 and tier-4 areas in India. These audiences haven’t any respectable screens close to them in any respect. If exhibitors give them high quality at a value that respects their pockets, then that’s the largest alternative within the Indian exhibition sector.
How do you see theatres evolving particularly as content material turns into hyper-localised?
The one most necessary shift of this decade is that the centre of gravity has moved. For a technology, a blockbuster was Hindi and it travelled outward. Right now, the most important theatrical phenomena have come from the South, from regional industries, from movies rooted in a really particular soil that then exploded nationally — Baahubali, KGF, Pushpa, and Kantara. Hyper-local content material shouldn’t be a risk to theatres. It’s the gasoline for our subsequent growth.
There’s a motive behind this. Native content material wants native screens. Alternative is now not in including the tenth multiplex in a metro which is already saturated. Alternative is in constructing the primary good display within the a whole bunch of under-screened cities the place the viewers is giant, hungry and at present ignored. For my part, the theatre of the longer term shouldn’t be solely a luxurious field in a mall. It’s a mixture of a group anchor in a tier-3 city, programming a mixture of a nationwide tentpole and a regional movie. The long run development of India’s exhibition business is on this mixture.
