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The Diwali sparkle is back on the silver screen with the much-hyped Sooryavanshi finally hitting the theatres on Friday and recording a strong opening day collection (₹25 crore per some early estimates).
Riding its hopes on the Rohit Shetty-directed cop thriller as well as a spate of exciting launches in the pipeline, including Saif Ali Khan-Rani Mukerji starrer Bunty Aur Babli 2 and Salman Khan-starrer Antim, to get audiences back to the theatres, the hard-hit exhibition industry is optimistically looking at a revival.
Rajender Singh Jyala, Chief Programming Officer, Inox Leisure Ltd, said, “The opening response of Sooryavanshi has been very good and we expect to see strong momentum over the weekend. We have already seen Tamil, Telugu and Punjabi films reaching pre-pandemic levels in terms of collections in recent time and, therefore, we expect to see a similar strong performance by the film at the box office.”
A lot is riding on Sooryavansh i, which is the first Hindi film to get a wide release post the pandemic outbreak. Expectations are the film will rake in anywhere between ₹70 and ₹90 crore in the first weekend.
Strong pipeline
A host of big-budget flicks across Bollywood, Hollywood and regional languages are scheduled for release in the coming weeks and months, with at least one key Hindi film getting released every week, and theatre owners have their fingers crossed.
Ajay Bijli, CMD, PVR, told BusinessLine, “The pent-up demand from consumers to go out for entertainment is huge. Many States have allowed 100 per cent occupancy at cinemas and a strong movie content is lined up. We believe maybe by the beginning of next quarter or maximum by the first quarter of next financial year, is when things should be back to normal.”
Abneesh Roy, Executive Director-Institutional Equities, Edelweiss Securities, said, “We expect the Indian multiplex industry to bounce back fully by March-April.”
Karan Taurani, Senior Vice-President, Elara Capital, said, “The content pipeline for the next few months is very strong and we believe the Indian cinema recovery will be faster compared to global cinema trends.”
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