Parvinder in conversation with Mr. Kunal Sawhney (Sr. V.P. Operations Carnival Cinemas)
In many of our movies a backstabbing revenge formula story is always a common one, don’t you believe that in life or business it is even same. Recently Big stars Akshay Kumar, Abhishek Bachchan, Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt and Ajay Devgun came on Social Media to announce six big movies to be on OTT platform, all excited, even viewers. Social media flooded with positive captions, but only one segment felt ditched, Multiplex owners. Shocking that even AD owns a multiplex chain at small level which is NY cinemas. Still his Movie “Bhuj” is releasing on OTT Platform.
This brings us to a filmy situation of Sahib Biwi aur Ghulam. I hope you all being a movie fan can definitely guess who is what. With this comment lets create a plot on three major points. Firstly, whether this sudden increase in release of Big Budget movies and Big Starcast on OTT platform will hit the performance and financials of Multiplex cinema or not. Secondly, what Multiplex thinks on the releases and what they will do to cope up with this attack of OTT platform. Thirdly, will there be a shift in genre-based movies, mid budget movies, regional movies, Hollywood movies and many more movie matrix, if there is a shift then what will be the trump card for Multiplex cinemas.
To answer these three major questions of our plot, we got in touch with the most innovative personality of Multiplex cinemas Mr. Kunal Sawhney Sr. VP Operations Carnival Cinemas.
So let me elaborate more on my first question. With big releases on OTT platform isn’t there a threat to Multiplex as more people will opt to OTT platform and even have options to watch movie as per their convenience, yes patron will go for a movie for experience but about 30% of patron will cut off specifically those for whom are frequent and watch alone or in couples. Kunal has different opinion altogether on this, he says that OTT platform is more of an approved version of piracy. He even courted a ball towards me that what do you prefer watching a movie with family at home or watching a movie with family at a Multiplex. Definitely for me an enjoying choice is watching a movie at Multiplex.
Now comes my second query as how Multiplex will stop the impact of OTT sand what is their strategy to see that Big Budget films are not released. To this Kunal’s answer is that a big actors 60% of income is from endorsement, and theatrical release plays an important role in brand development of an actor/actress, as how do we calculate Akshay Kumar or Salman Khan, that they are a 200 or 300 crore club star. This image creates him/her as a brand by which they earn commercial endorsements. Even you compare a known TV actress vs a known Bollywood actress, who gets more amount of commercial endorsements. Take e-g of Radhika Apte, Aahana Kumra vs Alia bhatt, Deepika. On Fame ground both channel artists have same impact on their viewership channel.
Let’s finish our conversation with my last arrow. For Multiplex cinemas there are e 4 to 5 Big releases in a year which are Blockbusters and ensure the bell ringing on cash tills. For the rest of the period in recent a major role has been played by Hollywood Content, You cannot move away from movies such as Avengers, Alladin, Fast and Furious series, Annibal etc. Then comes the shock success regional cinemas, Sairat, Boys, Fatehshikast, Hirakani Marathi movie, Shadaa, Chal Mera Putt, Sufna, Nikka Zaildar Punjabi movies, Hellaro, Chal Jeevi laye, Shuthayo, Gujjubhai Most wanted Gujarati movie, As far as Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malyalam are concerned they are the second stream of the Box office river in States Below Mumbai and plays a role of regional cinema in north. On this Kunal has a broad view, as per him earlier the second stream and regional cinema had limited options of release as Multiplex has limited number of screens, now the river bed is more broadened to fill in the mainstream release this will highly benefit new producers. Definitely the booster tonic from last couple of years has been regional movies now it is more comfortable for us to accommodate them in our programming. He says there are more than 4000 odd movies are released in India every year, only 500-600 gets released at multiplex, the release pool is 10 times bigger than our overall India’s programming matrix, so even if OTT takes the same amount of release from us Still there will 2500 odd movies which will have limited release. With OTT and Multiplex growing the release configuration, these organic producers of 2500 movies will grow more.
Here we end the conversation, but still something was craving me, ah it’s the desert. So I floated one more tricky conversations, “what about scenario when DVD players came in existence and to an extent the single screens were affected”. I am talking about late 90’s and early 20K, for him it was majorly not the DVD players but the entry of Multiplex with quality experience and service and this is what is still the USP of a Multiplex player, the day you add quality to a multiplex which is 10 years old, The occupancy increases, we OTT is not a competition on this part, but multiplex has an upper hand, which was actually the reason for drying up single screen, the single screen which have added quality and created good ambience are still running with more than 40% occupancy and are a success in areas such as South, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar. To accommodate this factor of cinema experience, still there is long way as compared to screen per 1000, India is the lowest in graph, so a combined effort of single screen and Muliplex, such as Utsav (PVR) and Jalsa (Carnival) are entering B and C classified cities.
I believe with this outcome we can say, hope is master of all success stories, our Multiplex will not take revenge but will definitely prevent its self from ########.
