The Hindu Business Line : Coming soon to a cinema near you …

“Keeping in view its potency to watch films and consume film-related entertainment and the density of screens per population, India is badly underserved.” _ Tushar Dhingra, CEO, Adlabs

The big picture

Meera Mohanty

If you are one among the thousands that still flock to the multiplex, it’s time you looked around. Exhibitors are beginning to offer other options. Enjoying a revival are single-screen theatres and neighbourhood theatres, premium services and c onveniences targeted at corporates, formats specially targeted at audiences in smaller towns and niche audiences in the city. It is not multiplex weariness that is driving cinema chains to seek alternatives. Despite our obsession with movies, which seems to colour all aspects of life in India, the screens per people count is rather weak.

Single screens, a value proposition

“We believe there is a great value that exists in single-screen cinemas, and we have decided to focus on digitising single-screens and refurbishing existing cinemas rather than focus only on multiplexes,” says Atul Goel, CEO, E-City Ventures, the company behind the chain of Fun Cinemas. Single-screen cinemas, says Goel, have long suffered from a lack of bargaining power with distributors and big banners. E-City hopes to rescue these halls from complete financial ruin by digitising and refurbishing them. Owners of the newly jazzed-up places would get a fixed weekly commitment, and E-City would take on both the financial and programming aspects of the business. With 90 screens already digitised, the company hopes to add another 1,000 in five years’ time. An additional 250 screens which the company will take on long-term lease would also be refurbished.

However, to put things in perspective, one must point out that it is the multiplexes that matter most where returns are concerned. About half of the total revenues of the 13,000- 15,000 screens in India comes from the 600-odd multiplex screens. Fun Cinema itself has plans to add another 300 multiplex screens. However, says Goel, “There are some pockets, Gurgaon for example, which are saturated with multiplexes and players are eating into one another’s market.”

Adlabs Cinemas’ COO Tushar Dhingra, however, believes that over-capacity exists only in certain catchments as at Andheri in Mumbai.

“Keeping in view its potency to watch films and consume film-related entertainment and the density of screens per population, India is badly underserved,” he says, predicting the number of screens to double next year. India is believed to have 3.3 billion admits, growing at only 2 to 3 per cent. However, the industry itself enjoys a far higher growth rate of about 30 per cent due to the climbing rate of ticket prices.

Now, walk to the movies

PVR, the multiplex chain celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, is also open to the idea of taking on existing cinemas as long as it can maintain the PVR brand proposition. For now, however, it is focussed on bringing cinemas to neighbourhoods. Tickets at its newly opened second neighbourhood cinema at Prashant Vihar in the Capital will not be any cheaper because service standards will not be compromised, says Gautam Datta, CEO Cine Media, PVR.

“The driving force behind the whole idea is that you can now walk to movies,” says Datta. The three-screen, 800-plus-seater screened new releases such as Chak de India, Kaafila and Rush Hour 3.

Till a year-and-a-half ago, PVR’s South Delhi Saket complex used to draw customers who lived 20 to 25 km away. “It’s not the number of kilometres, but the number of hours. Let’s accept it, with more and more congestion on the roads, people want to visit theatres close to home. Of the 14 cities it is present in, PVR believes at least six of the larger cities offer multiple opportunities for such neighbourhood cinemas.

In consolidation mode

Adlabs, which claims to have been the first to give single-screens a second lease of life, believes that the exhibition business is beginning to see some sort of consolidation. Like in retail, there are no standard models. The company’s mixed format strategy for the 70 cities it hopes to cover by March 2008 includes several two-screen theatres. They would be slightly scaled down and tickets would be cheaper but the seats, leg room and other conveniences would be the same. Much of this expansion of cinemas is planned for the hinterland, or Tier-II and Tier-III cities.

“These are towns such as Warangal, Vellore and Sangli, whose names you might not hear that often but which have populations of 9 to 10 lakh,” says Adlabs’ Dhinghra.

The existing popular single-screen cinemas in these towns are typically found at prime localities in proximity to a good catchment population. And being the only outdoor entertainment of choice, they do see a very high percentage of occupancy.

While they may choose their own, different paths, all cinema exhibitors agree on one point. Nothing — whether it is delayed projects at the developers’ end, traffic and congestion putting off consumers or the hard bargains between distributors and exhibitors — will keep a movie-crazy country away from the movies.

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Coming soon to a cinema near you …