Regaining the crowd in cinemas – thanks to multiplexes.

Indian cinema has been a vital source of entertainment for people for one century. Various categories of movies are released in India like action, drama, romantic, social issues, mythological or devotional. Till 1970s and late 1980s, people enjoyed Indian movies in single screen cinemas but after 1980, due to televisions, video cassettes, people started staying away from cinemas. This led to huge loss to cinema industry as cinema hall owners were not able to meet expenses and many cinema halls were shut down during that period. Worst years were between 1990-late 90’s when cable TV had gripped Indian entertainment industry and cinema halls were left with few takers only.

This situation continued till early 2000s when some multiplexes chains opened in some metro cities. Some multiplex chains like PVR, Fun Cinemas, Big Cinemas, Inox and others widely expanded it’s cinemas in metro cities to tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Today, all major cities in India have number of multiplexes and not only cities but multiplexes have captured cinema industry in small towns where people have high paying capacity. Now people have options to choose a variety of presence of multiple multiplexes and movie according to their choice.

The reason behind people getting inclined to multiplexes is ambiance and facilities at multiplexes. Comfortable reclining chairs, air conditioned auditorium, well maintained infrastructure, ample parking space for vehicles, well sanitized toilets, food courts are major services which pull crowd to the multiplexes. Apart from this, another reason is clear picture projection and fantastic sound system. Now people do not want to watch movie on television and it is often heard from people that someone really wants to enjoy a movie, multiplexes should be preferred to watch it.

People who refrained to visit cinemas with families as the audience included offensive and indecent people but now people have started to visit multiplexes due to presence of decent and family class people in the multiplexes. Some families prefer to go for night shows as most of the audience in these shows is family class people. Security arrangements are very good in multiplexes. All multiplexes have prohibited smoking, consuming tobacco, pan masala, chewing gum inside the cinema premises, so there are no unhygienic conditions in the auditoriums. After expansion of multiplexes chains, cinema industry which was about die has got a breath and crowd has started returning to watch movies in cinemas. There were hardly hit movies in 1990s but after 2000, there have been number of blockbuster, super hit and hit movies. There are lots of movies which have done outstanding business and earned handsome collections. In recent years, movies like PK, Three Idiots, Chennai Express, Dabang, Dhoom series, Golmaal series, Rowdy Rathore have done tremendous business.

This all is possible due to people watching movies in cinema halls and there are direct or indirect benefits of people with the expansion of multiplex chains in all cities. Hope this expansion continues and people too continue enjoying their favourite movie with family at a multiplex near.