These are testing times for the film industry as films bite the dust week after week. Its not just the disaster fate of films but the fact that audiences today are not just giving them a chance and not even coming for them from the very first day. This is reflected in the initial and its happened week in week out and so various theories do the rounds and as the film industry faced a lot of flak on social media and media through the pandemic the main theory is that this negativity is now meaning most of the audience is just not interested in Hindi films.

This theory gets compounded as a few South films and a Hollywood film Spiderman - No Way Home have done very well in the same period and another Hollywood film Dr Strange is set to do very well this week.  So this does make it look the public has an issue with Hindi films but looking at the bigger picture there are South films and Hollywood films which have also been mega disasters. There is no precedent with South films as before the pandemic they were released in a minimal way but if we look at Hollywood films post the pandemic then business for the regular films is also hugely down compared to similar films before the pandemic. 

There is basically a correction going on at the box office with the regular film which is finding it harder to get the audience to the cinemas. This is probably because for two years these type of films were coming straight to the viewer at home and now that viewer is prepared to wait for weeks like he / she had been doing through the pandemic for that film at home. It hardly matters if you see Attack or Runway in the cinema or at home but a Spiderman or RRR have cinematic value so there is an urgency with the audience to watch these films in the cinemas so they accumulate box office numbers. 

The audience has also seen ticket rates rise around 30-40% on average compared to the price they were watching at before the pandemic which also does not help. There is no issue for the film which is cinematic and has that urgency as for them you could even go higher in prices but for the regular films it becomes an issue and the audience probably feels its not worth paying and they can watch for free if they have to a few weeks later. This week Dr Strange has taken ticket pricing to a new high but it will not stop the boxoffice.

The problem now becomes how do you get the audience back to the theatres when for around twenty years you have been making films generally which have offer limited entertainment for the masses barring some exceptions. Due to this there was a dwindling audience in mass belts but its this audience which has made RRR and KGF 2 such big BLOCKBUSTERS so this audience is still there andnow may be the one which decides the fate of the film. We say this as more of that urban audience which the industry made films for the past twenty may have shifted towards wait for it on streaming audience.

No doubt its going to be tough as the sensibilities of the industry in Mumbai are too different from the core Hindi film audience. Back in the golden period from 1960-1983 (Mughal E Azam till Coolie) the producers and directors knew the pulse of the audience so the greatest HIndi films generally came in that period. Post 1983, video hit the flm industry which meant stagnation but still the industry managed to cater week in week out to the core audience for the next twenty years. The change came in the millenuium. We have written many times in the past about what happened after films like Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai and how the film industry went the wrong way. This was always going to catch up sooner or later but the pandemic has sadly pushed it sooner and caught the film industry totally flat footed.

The industry saw that films like Lagaan, Rang De Basanti, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, Barfi!, Gully Boy etc were getting reasonable numbers and these films matched their own sensibilities so basically went towards this zone but the numbers were generally coming due to higher ticket rates of big cinemas and in what we call the core India markets there were no takers or much less takers. The industry sees these films as CLASSICS when the most of the Hindi belt audience would not even use the word DECENT for most of these films. In an industry where these films are thought to be great films and better than the Tigers, Golmaals, Dhooms and Housefulls and others and now better han the RRR's and KGF's then a downfall will happen as you are too different from the paying audience.

The fact today is many in the industry do not see RRR and KGF 2 as good films but just box office successes which shows a huge disconnect with the Hindi mass audience which has lapped up these films. We saw the same thing with 83 last year where not only did the industry think its a great film but a historic blockbuster as well but the audience was fast enough to put that straight. 

The Hindi belt is mainly Haryana, UP, Bihar, MP, Rajasthan, Gujarat and a few of other states and anyone doing some research can check how much of the Hindi speaking public is in these areas. It may well be around 70%. The simple fact is that if your film cannot appeal to the middle class in these areas its NOT a good film irrespective of collections as reaonable collections can come from pockets with high ticket rates. These states is where the bulk of your audience is, the higher these places go the higher the overall number goes and KGF 2 is a reminder of this. Remember cinema appreciation is about the number of PEOPLE watching and liking a film and collections can sometimes hide this but eventually its going to tell when less and less people are interested in what you call cinema.

This sort of problem had started earlier when the industry had seen films like Parinda (1989) and Agneepath (1990) as CLASSICS when they were torture and could bore anyone to death despite having huge stars of the time in them. Maybe at that time the industry was fascinated by the underworld or maybe the lighting was new or some new shot taking was there but Hollywood would have done this years back and people in the industry would have seen before so what was the big deal. But at that time it was just the start of bad films being put on a pedastal and the push really came post 2000.

This did not happen in the golden period as then if you did not cater to the audience then you could lose everything and be out on the road as the risk was with the producer. In the 2000's the studio culture started with the big Hollywood studios coming which further alienated the cinema from the core audience. Also with Hollywood studios you made the film of an X amount and offloaded it for X plus Y which meant the box office result held less importance in terms of profit.

An example of how clueless the industry is today that female version of Dil Chahta Hai (2001) was announced and that too with the same director who probably had no clue what cinema was in 2001 even though there was Gadar roaring in cinemas at that time at a higher level than KGF 2 is doing today. So now to announce a female Dil Chahta Hai and that too for cinemas is something that can only happen in this industry. You have this sort of crap and on the other side there is bad cinema in the name of masala cinema where they put the mass elements in without a story thinking masses will lap it. The traditional method in the golden era was to have a strong story first and then put the commercial elements or padding which was a must for cinema viewing. It was said the foundation must be strong then the house can be built.

Cutting a long story short the majority of cinema dished out over the last twenty years has been for the minority neglecting the core Hindi film audience and now the minority which was less in numbers anyway has changed its viewing habits leaving an even smaller audience for the regular film. The core Hindi audience is still out there but you dont have the content to cater to them so others are doing at present. The question now is can you cater to the real core audience, can you understand what is actually a good film, can your films open on the Friday as without that real success is going to be hard if not impossible to come by. 

The ones that find a way to cater to the Hindi audience will survive and the others can always go to television be it stars or makers. There is a more fancy word today for television like streaming but eventually its home viewing and television and if you have seen good times in cinema its a huge step down. There is going to be lot of pain over the next 6-8 months as many films tank without even getting a look in but if the industry manages to understand the demands of the that core Hindi audience and are able to deliver there will be better times ahead but if and when that will happen is anybody's guess.