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Entertainment segment has been hit the hardest by the impact of COVID-19. Cinema halls, including single screens and multiplexes in India, saw one of the toughest lockdown for 7 months.

The multiplex industry suffered massive financial losses, with thousands of screens countrywide forced to close down, and many employees, not just of cinemas, but even their supply chains and other stakeholders, facing personal hardship. Multiplex Association of India, that represents more than 11 cinema chains, operating more than 500 multiplexes across the country submitted a concrete plan in May 2020 to the I&B Ministry on safety measures and precautionary protocols to be followed for reopening theatres and cinema halls post lockdown.

Finally as a result of making repeated representations to the government, cinemas, theatres and multiplexes were permitted to open with up to 50 per cent of their seating capacity from October 15 as per the new guidelines by the Ministry of Home Affairs as part of Unlock 5.

At PVR, our primary aim in our reopening strategy was to build customer confidence. In the initial ‘Evangelism’ phase, we wanted people to experience the enhanced safety features first-hand. This involved several goodwill screenings for Corona Warriors and their families, running movie festivals, along with private screenings, running promotional offers including flat ticket price and discounted F&B.

Staggered re-opening of cinemas with 50% capacity cap by different states saw limited movie releases on the part of producers. Moreover audiences were not willing to come out of their homes to watch old movies in theatres being played.

However, new Bengali movies released during Durga Puja and South Indian movies during Pongal drew huge opening week footfalls to theatres and beyond boosted the confidence of the industry. The box office results of these movies along with some Hollywood content demonstrated the pent up demand for quality films. It indicated that consumers were confident about the safety and hygiene protocols followed by the multiplexes if there was good content.

The 100% seating capacity announcement by the government in cinemas infused a sense of cheer in the industry along with the vaccination drive. Cinema halls are now open across the entire country, easing the apprehensions in the minds of content producers and studios, who have now started to line up their releases March 2021 onwards.

We believe there is a strong pent-up demand among consumers to watch movies on the big screen. A lot of films of massive scale and size have already been announced for theatrical release and more key announcements would follow. There is a huge backlog of movies lined up for release at theatres, and movie goers can even look forward to big movie releases even on the same dates. We are confident that these titles are sure to change the landscape of the Indian box office for this year and beyond and we feel that the Indian film industry will get back to pre-Covid levels sooner than expected.

(The writer is CEO, PVR Ltd. Views expressed are personal)