Why 2022 is shaping up to be one of the best years for India's movie business

The Hindi film Drishyam 2’s Rs 200-crore-plus collection and the expected big openings for Hollywood’s Avatar sequel ‘The Way of Water’ and Ranveer Singh-starrer Cirkus in the last two months of the year are expected to drive 2022 into becoming one of the best years for the Indian film business, having already collected Rs 9,024 crore in gross domestic box office in the January-October 2022 period.  

This comes after the pandemic-related multiple lockdowns for extended periods of time between March 2020 and January 2022 decimated the film exhibition business.  

The best year so far has been 2019 with a gross domestic box office collection of Rs 10,948 crore, followed by 2018 which raked in Rs 9,810 crore, according to consultancy firm Ormax Media. Despite little contribution from the Hindi film industry, the gross domestic box office collection for 2022 stands at Rs 9,024 crore till October.  

Drishyam 2, which released on November 18, has already posted more than Rs 200 crore in net collections. Analysts expect Avatar 2, which will release on December 16, to make more than Rs 500 crore in Indian net collections across languages and formats. Cirkus, which is directed by Rohit Shetty, is also expected to open big.  

So, there’s a chance that 2022 could be one of the biggest years for the Indian domestic box office, according to Dhishoom Cinemas Founding CEO Tushar Dhingra. 

Listed multiplex chains PVR saw footfalls of 18 million in the July-September 2022 quarter compared to the 19.5 million footfalls witnessed in the pre-pandemic quarter of Jan-March 2020. Similarly, INOX Leisure saw 11.6 million footfalls in the September quarter compared to the 12.8 million in the January-March 2020 quarter. 

“This (the collections and footfalls) are mainly on account of content from the south. Collections of movies such as RRR, KGF: Chapter 2 and Kantara increased and got recognition up north as well. Up to the Bahubali films and Pushpa: The Rise, there was no theatrical market for south Indian movies in the north. Once the Hindi belt opened up, these movies are doing phenomenally well up north. The content of other language movies has actually driven audience to see them in theatres,” says NV Capital Founding Partner Vivek Menon. 

Bollywood usually contributes 40-45 per cent to India’s domestic gross box office collections.  But the Hindi film industry has had a poor showing this year, accounting for 33 per cent of the Rs 9,024 crore cumulative box office collection in India during January-October 2022, according to Ormax Media’s ‘The India Box Office Report’. Even within that, more than a third of it came from Hindi-dubbed versions of Telugu, Tamil & Kannada language films. 

“More and more, the language barriers are going away. A clear example of this Kannada film Kantara dubbed in Hindi working very well at the theatres,” says Dhishoom Cinemas’ Dhingra.  The film made more than Rs 79 crore in net collections in Hindi alone, according to trade portal Bollywood Hungama. “Box office is the only way to make successful films because it is the fountain around which everything happens. This is where primary recovery happens and everything flows from it,” adds Dhingra.  

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