'After Saiyaara, a lot of confidence has come in. Hindi is now looking good, especially with Dhurandhar 2 expected in March.'
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.'
With 17 films crossing the Rs 100 crore mark in the first six months, this year relied less on big-ticket blockbusters.
'Just the fact that the biggest language at the box office was Telugu and not Hindi is startling.'
'For OTT platforms, securing dubbed rights often makes greater business sense, enabling them to serve diverse regional audiences more effectively.'
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.
'We want to become India's topmost integrated studio, working in different languages.'
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
The reason is because there aren't any screens for a large mass of Indians.
'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.'
'Audiences are loyal to good content.'
January and February surpassed the monthly domestic box collection on a year-on-year basis.
Over-the-top platforms make it difficult for movies to run for long periods on the silver screen, thus hurting the cinema industry.
'The satisfaction of making content only comes when it reaches theatres as you are directly connecting to the masses.'
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.
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.
'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.'
It means more tickets sold and therefore more revenues and hastens the recovery of the devastated-by-the-pandemic film business.
More than 157 million Indians watched at least one film in the theatre in 2023.
Calendar 2022 will go down as a year when the real star was the Next Big Idea.
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.
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.'
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.
'This is a blip in the 100-year history of cinema.'
This is the fourth time in three decades that Aamir Khan and Akshay Kumar have had movie releases on the same day.
Social media teams ensure there is something new around the movie every few days and as the release date nears, every few hours.
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.
Netflix is reminiscent of Star TV in the 1990s: Very Western in its gaze, very expensive, and clueless, notes Vanita Kohli-Khandekar.
Most of India knows Deep Sidhu as the man who planted the Sikh religious flag on Red Fort.
'...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.'
Business is better than usual in Bollywood.
More Indians are watching films across screens, TV, online and other platforms than ever before. Whether it is by tackling costs, processes or revenues, the trick is to find a way of making money from all of them, says Vanita Kohli-Khandekar.
'We need more universal films like Dangal, Sultan or Padmavat that work across single screens and multiplexes.'
After a miserable two years of flopping films and stagnant revenues, what has changed for the film industry?
Unlike most Bollywood kids whose careers tend to play out in fits and starts, Alia's growth has been swift and steady.
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