The Hindu Business Line : Quality of content has its say on film industry

NEARLY 1,000 cinema houses across Maharashtra may have stopped screening films to protest against entertainment tax but a larger issue that confronts this industry is the quality of the content, in this case films.

Never mind the embellishments and trappings inside a cinema house; ultimately the film that is churned out by the world's biggest movie factory has to bring in the audience.

Film exhibition, the third leg of the film industry after production and distribution, has had some ups and downs with profitability, as most Bollywood films barring a few have not been able to turn in sufficient audiences.

"Barring Baghban and Kal Ho Na Ho, most other films have been flops. The average occupancy has been around 30 per cent. Single screen cinema halls cannot survive in such a scenario,'' said Mr R. Vidhani, President, Theatre Owners' Association.

For single screen cinema halls, the low occupancy problem is accentuated further resulting in a much lower return on investment compared with multiplexes. Additionally, single screen cinema halls are faced with entertainment tax while multiplexes are offered tax holidays. Average occupancy in multiplexes is around 35-45 per cent as the number of seats per cinema hall is much lower than single screen halls.

Expansion and upgradation of film exhibition infrastructure is a critical factor for the industry. "Improvement in theatre infrastructure in terms of seating comfort, audio-visual effects will induce more people to view films at theatres,'' a FICCI report had said.

Inadequate number of screens is a bane for the Indian film exhibition industry. The fact that a larger number of the screens are single standalone movie houses is yet another negative factor.

The emergence of the multiplex formula of film exhibition is changing the overall exhibition landscape in the country.

According to the FICCI - Ernst & Young report on the Indian entertainment industry, there will be 45 new multiplexes with approximately 150 screens by 2005. A large number of them are in combination with shopping malls, gaming zones and restaurants.

"The largest concentration of these multiplexes is in Mumbai, Delhi and Gujarat. This will create the kind of demand that has not been witnessed before,'' the report said.

Single screen cinema hall owners have been unhappy about the favoured status offered to multiplexes in term of tax holidays. "Besides, there are rules that cinema halls cannot be converted into a commercial establishment,'' Mr Vidhani said.

However, multiplexes also have their share of woes. "The cost of maintaining a multiplex is four times that of a single screen,'' says Mr Neeraj Goswami, Manager - Programming, Shringar Films, which owns multiplexes in Mumbai. As the number of seats is divided between three to four screens the return on investment tends to be higher.

Films such as Ab Tak Chappan and Jhankar Beats have fared well in these multiplexes, thereby prompting the industry to refer to these films as multiplex films.

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