Vishek Chauhan traces how India’s exhibition landscape peaked in the 1980s, then stagnated under VCRs, TV and piracy, before multiplex-driven, urban-centric cinema eroded the single-screen ecosystem. He argues that rising ticket prices and elite-focused content have decimated small-town audiences, even as stars and hits were historically built by the very masses now priced out.
When Rang De Basanti released in 2006, its anti-corruption sentiment triggered a national movement and broke box office records. Yet, over 1,000 kilometers away from the capital where the story was set, the revolutionary drama completely tanked at Roopbani Cinema in Purnia, Bihar.
But what was the other movie that actually captured the imagination of the local audience, running flat-out for over nine weeks? The Sanjay Kapoor-starrer Chhupa Rustam (2001).
"Most people in metro cities don't even know it exists, but our audience went absolutely crazy for it. This is how unpredictable the box-office can be," says exhibitor Vishek Chauhan. "One might watch a film in a city and assume it speaks for all of India, but the grassroots palate is diverse enough to constantly surprise you."
As the owner of Purnia's Roopbani Cinema, Chauhan brings this exact ground-level perspective to his debut book, Cinemas Forever, which charts the global history of exhibition alongside India's volatile industry and star dynamics.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter India, Chauhan talks about single screens, ticket prices, star power, and why the number of cinemas in India isn't growing at a rapid speed.
Edited excerpts from a conversation:
Can you give a few examples of extreme box-office anomalies in your territory — films that the mainstream trade considers massive hits, but that failed in your theater?
Absolutely. On one end of the spectrum, urban cult classics like Dil Chahta Hai and Rang De Basanti completely bombed in our territory. When Rang De Basanti came out, I was studying for in Delhi. You couldn't get a single ticket across multiplexes there; we had to travel from Gurgaon to Chanakya Cinema just to catch a show, and the crowds were phenomenal. But when I called back home to Purnia, they told me the theatre was entirely empty. It simply failed to connect with the local audience. Even a cinematic juggernaut like 3 Idiots surprisingly failed to perform in nearby markets like Forbesganj.
Similarly, with a massive hit like Dangal, the performance exponentially tapered down the deeper it went into rural markets.
What about under-the-radar films that became local blockbusters?
Akshay Kumar’s Jaanwar was an absolute phenomenon for us, running for 101 days and selling out all 28 shows a week during peak winter. Another shocking example was the Sanjay Kapoor-starrer Chhupa Rustam (2001). Most people in metro cities don't even know it exists, but our audience went absolutely crazy for it. It opened to packed houses and ran for nine straight weeks, with the first three weeks entirely full.
Films like Ajay Devgn's Hogi Pyaar Ki Jeet (1999) or Sanjay Dutt’s Daag: The Fire (1999) would comfortably run for 50 days in Bihar as massive, multi-bonanza blockbusters, even if they underperformed in Delhi or Mumbai multiplexes!
The data in your book shows that India had roughly 2,500 screens in 1947 and sits at around 9,500 today. But the count actually peaked back in the 1980s. What triggered that stagnation?
We hit 12,000 to 13,000 screens in the '80s before being slammed by the dual juggernaut of VCRs and television. Concurrently, the quality of Hindi cinema in the '80s plummeted. Filmmakers played it safe, family and social dramas vanished, and we were left with a repetitive cycle of raw action and gangster films. Smaller towns were hit hardest by rampant video parlour and cable piracy. As an exhibitor in a smaller center like Purnia, we would receive physical film prints at a later date, and I frequently had to call local cable operators to fight them on illegally broadcasting newly released movies.
Things stabilised in the '90s with the resurgence of musicals and the rise of stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, and Aamir Khan. Piracy was heavily countered, thanks in large part to early vocal campaigns by Amitabh Bachchan. Then, in 1997, Ajay Bijli introduced premium-isation with the first PVR multiplex in Saket.
And then in 2001, Dil Chahta Hai arrived and shifted the palette of Hindi filmmaking entirely toward urban, multiplex-centric spaces?
Yes it did. This completely collapsed the single-screen ecosystem in North India because those theatres stopped getting mass-oriented content.
When I returned to Purnia in 2009, our ticket prices were ₹12. Today, they are ₹250. That is a 20-fold increase in ticket prices over 17 years. Historically, our top-performing film, Akshay Kumar's Jaanwar (1999), ran for 101 days and pulled in close to one lakh footfalls in our 600-capacity theatre alone. Today, if a film hits 15,000 footfalls in our zone, we label it a blockbuster. That is how severely the audience has been decimated.
How does this issue specifically look when contrasting the North Indian market with the South?
The biggest culprit behind the drop in national theatre numbers is North India; the South is still flourishing, growing, and adding screens. Even corporate giants like PVR will directly invest capital into their South properties, whereas in the North, they insist that developers bear the infrastructure costs.
The South is also deeply blessed in terms of content diversity. If you run a cinema in Karnataka, you can seamlessly screen Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, and Malayalam cinema alongside Hindi and Hollywood releases. The audience possesses a natural overlap and a gung-ho appetite for all kinds of cinema, making their ecosystem exceptionally robust.
In the North, we are almost entirely dependent on Hindi cinema. Only a rare dubbed South film or a major Hollywood release manages to penetrate deep markets like ours. If a Tamil or Bengali film could regularly pull numbers in Purnia, exhibitors in the North would be opening new theaters left and right.
Instead, North Indian multiplexes are currently trapped in a luxury arms race, debating blankets, dinners, and recliners. The iconic stars who built this industry — Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman, Aamir, Akshay, Ajay Devgn — were not created by elite multiplex audiences. They were built by the common man, the hair salon guys, and the people standing in gruelling, chaotic ticket lines in small towns. Yet, the current exhibition model treats those very masses as entirely disposable.
Is ticket pricing truly the primary reason keeping the common man away, or is the modern multiplex culture itself becoming inherently intimidating? A producer recently mentioned to me that even if he sponsors his house staff to watch a film at a premium multiplex, they feel uncomfortable navigating spaces packed with recliners, at-seat dining, and blankets.
He is absolutely right. It is the exact same intimidation an underprivileged person feels walking into a five-star hotel — wondering where to sit, what to order, or even how to use the restroom.
We have successfully priced out and alienated the common man over the last 15 to 20 years, restricting their movie-going to just once or twice a year. If you look at the US, an average theatre outing for a family might cost around 2 per cent of their monthly income, and their annual footfalls are three times their population. In India, a single theatrical visit for a family can eat up nearly 10 per cent to 15 per cent of an average monthly income, yet we aren't even hitting 50 per cent of our population in footfalls.
We are the most under-screened major film market in the world because everything has become a luxury play. Multiplexes cater to the five-star crowd, but where is the "OYO" or the "Indigo Airlines" of cinema? We need a no-frills, standardised model that guarantees baseline picture quality, sound, and seating at an affordable price point of ₹100 to ₹120 across the country.
Tamil Nadu is a prime example of this working beautifully; ticket prices are legally capped, even PVR operates within that cap, and their weekday footfalls are massive.