The monumental box office success of the Dhurandhar franchise has been attributed to Director Aditya Dhar's creative vision, rather than lead star Ranveer Singh's appeal.
The reason is because there aren't any screens for a large mass of Indians.
'After Saiyaara, a lot of confidence has come in. Hindi is now looking good, especially with Dhurandhar 2 expected in March.'
The industry is anticipating 2025 to deliver around Rs 13,500 crore in overall box-office collections, which would cement it as India's strongest box-office year after 2023
'For OTT platforms, securing dubbed rights often makes greater business sense, enabling them to serve diverse regional audiences more effectively.'
OTT users have crossed the 600 million mark which is around 41 per cent of India's population.
'Audiences are loyal to good content.'
'The South today is a creative engine shaping the future of Indian entertainment.'
They Call Him OG topped the gross domestic box office collection with Rs 224 crore (Rs 2.24 billion).
It's 'not looking like a Diwali lineup, which is usually grand and has superstar movies.'
'The satisfaction of making content only comes when it reaches theatres as you are directly connecting to the masses.'
Over-the-top platforms make it difficult for movies to run for long periods on the silver screen, thus hurting the cinema industry.
With 17 films crossing the Rs 100 crore mark in the first six months, this year relied less on big-ticket blockbusters.
More screens, more films, and longer windows will convert to more people watching, assuming they know a film is releasing, points out Vanita Kohli-Khandekar.
January and February surpassed the monthly domestic box collection on a year-on-year basis.
Non-fiction continues to grow with the most-watched unscripted show, Bigg Boss OTT S3 getting more than half the viewership that Panchayat (S3) got.
More than 157 million Indians watched at least one film in the theatre in 2023.
With the eagerly awaited Pushpa 2: The Rule set for release in December, there's a chance the industry could match, if not surpass, the collections of 2023.
'After Diwali, I don't see this trend of re-releases going forward. We won't have that window to re-release films because of the kind of movies that are slated to be released.'
While super hits like Jawaan are missing this year, it has been filled with a range of medium-range hits such as Crew, Teri Baaton Ne Uljhaa Diya and Guntur Kaaram, observes Vanita Kohli-Khandekar.
'It has never happened that all Top 5 songs on Spotify are from one film. On the Ormax list, the Top 9 are from Animal.' 'The music is good, sure. But everything has taken off with Animal the film.'
'Just the fact that the biggest language at the box office was Telugu and not Hindi is startling.'
Audiences are missing theatres desperately and will go back to them within two-three weeks of them reopening. All those hours of films on television and OTT have not reduced the audience's need for the theatrical experience.
Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, and Hyderabad account for 33% of the total active paid subscriptions.
Calendar 2022 will go down as a year when the real star was the Next Big Idea.
Netflix is reminiscent of Star TV in the 1990s: Very Western in its gaze, very expensive, and clueless, notes Vanita Kohli-Khandekar.
'...you start running after the star.' 'If the star says yes to the film, the ecosystem supports it.' 'The biggest cog in the wheel of the ecosystem is the audience and we forget that.'
'The number of films released in cinemas in 2022 was closer to 1,200. It could cross 1,500 in 2023, since nearly all big stars in Hindi and regional languages have films lined up this year.'
It means more tickets sold and therefore more revenues and hastens the recovery of the devastated-by-the-pandemic film business.
Whether it is non-Hindi films dubbed in Hindi or Hindi dubbed in other Indian languages or English dubbed in Indian languages, the whole multilingual film is bringing more ticket sales.
'This is the best time to do a pan-Indian film.'
This is the fourth time in three decades that Aamir Khan and Akshay Kumar have had movie releases on the same day.
'This is a blip in the 100-year history of cinema.'
'There is so much talk about Netflix and what they should be doing.' 'In two years, SonyLIV has done what Netflix should be doing.'
Varun was all but locked in to play Harshad Mehta by Paresh Rawal. But the script for the bio-pic was stuck. They finally had to scrap the idea.
A scroll through Akshay Kumar's Instagram feed shows numerous posts and stories promoting Gold. Sonakshi Sinha, on the other hand, posts stories from her shoots and events to drive home the message of an upcoming release. In both cases, the film in question gets much-needed attention.
For advertisers, the cricket carnival remains the single-biggest impact window.
Buoyed by Sooryavanshi's success, the Hindi film industry is banking on 25-30 big movies lined up with a collective cost tag of Rs 2,000 crore.
Such is Sharma's clout that very few are willing to take sides in this controversy. 'It's like talking about Salman Khan.' 'No one wants to ruffle feathers.'
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