Aamir Khan has been a strong advocate of ending the OTT tamasha. He believes that producers should not ideally sell their movies to OTT platforms if they want to attract audiences to theatres. "If you tell your consumer that you will get access to a product eight weeks later even if you don't buy it today, why will they buy it today for a higher price? They will wait for eight weeks." This is the sum and substance of what Aamir recently said.
So, Aamir's first silver bullet to revive the fate of Hindi cinema is to tackle the threat from streaming platforms. The second silver bullet he believes in is that budget theatres have to be opened across northern Indian states. "China has nearly one lakh theatres. Chinese blockbusters make about Rs 4,000 Cr or thereabouts. India has about 10,000 screens, with hardly half of them available for the Hindi market. If budget theatres are opened, film business can be improved," Aamir recently told The Hollywood Reporter India.
But the numbers don't tell the full story. China's per capita income is many times that of India's. Disposable incomes are what make the difference rather than the number of theatres alone. If a population is poor, it will avoid watching movies unless they are really special. Real estate costs also matter. Budget theatres are not budget theatres if the cost of compliance and maintenance is high. And Indian businesses face this problem across the board.
