West Bengal: Cinema owners jittery as low year-end release count, alternate seating take toll on footfall

KOLKATA: Christmas has traditionally been big for cinemas in Bengal with multiple big-ticket Hindi, English and Bengali releases. This year, it is going to be a litmus test for Bengal’s exhibitors December 24 onwards. With a major Bengali Christmas release pushed back and a Feluda release on OTT, theatre owners are jittery. Most feel the SOP that doesn’t allow viewers even from the same family to sit together at cinemas is a major stumbling block.
Every year, Priya had nothing less than five to six shows on the Christmas weekend. This year, the number has dropped to two. “I just have two shows of ‘Wonder Woman 1984’. Earlier on, we had much-awaited movies releasing during Christmas. This year, it will be very difficult to sustain ourselves if we don’t get at least 25% occupancy for each show,” said owner Arijit Dutta.

Sujit Kumar Bhukta, general manager (east) of Carnival Cinemas, said, “While Hollywood has taken the risk to release on Christmas, Bollywood and Tollywood have pushed back. The projected sales figure at our cinemas for this Christmas is 25% of what it was last year.”
Navina’s owner is equally rattled. Throughout the year, the best box-office figures at his theatre have been generated during Christmas and New Year’s week. Now it will screen two new releases, with three shows of ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ and one show of ‘Chini’. Last year, Navina had six shows and had screened four movies, including two in Bengali — ‘Professor Shanku O El Dorado’ and ‘Saanjhbati’. “Besides, we also ran ‘Mardaani 2’. The Christmas week was followed by ‘Good Newwz’, which also did fantastic business,” said owner Navin Choukhani. However, the advance bookings of this year’s releases are “so negligible” that he “can’t even compare them with any year’s figures”.
According to him, one of the main reasons for this low footfall is the SOP preventing family viewing. “That is the main takeaway for cinema-going viewers. Now, when people can watch films in theatres, they are being asked to sit separately. If the alternate seating arrangement was not in place, we would have had more viewers. That would have encouraged producers to release their movies,” Choukhani added.
Burnt Garlic, the restaurant at the same address as Priya, is doing decent business while the cinema is struggling to get footfall. “Restaurants are allowing people to not wear masks and sit together. But the rules are different for cinemas. The film industry is being victimized. How long can we pay electricity bills when there are so few viewers? If the footfall is this bad during Christmas, Bengal might see mass closure of cinemas,” Dutta said.