The cumulative yearly business was at its highest level ever in 2017 with NETT collections going to 3085 crore. This is the first time that 3000 crore has been breached. The NETT collections are not the best judge in 2017 as there was a big tax change with GST but GROSS collections also see a record with 4085 crore. The first time GROSS figures have gone over 4000 crore. .

There is a 11% improvement in NETT collections from last year and a 7.5% upturn in GROSS collections. So basically its 7.5% growth year on year which is the best since 2013. The figures for 2016 and 2018 are as below

2016

GROSS - 3812 crore

NETT - 2787 crore

2017

GROSS - 4085 crore

NETT - 3085 crore

The growth is there but it does not actually tell the correct story as far as the audience in concerned as this jump in business is due to Bahubali - The Conclusion and a film like this comes every 10 or even 20 years. Take out this film and the picture is very poor with business going down to levels not seen since 2012. Also its not that Bahubali - The Conclusion took the place of a major film, we had our regular festive releases and other holiday releases like every year but the numbers have not come like they should.

The footfalls are pretty much similar to last year but again this includes the 5.25 crore of Bahubali - The Conclusion. If we take these out then the drop in footfalls is a huge 18% from last year and this is where the crux of problem lies for the film industry. Despite this this huge drop in the audience for Hindi films, the bottom financials probably the best since a long time thanks to the digital rights. The box office may have seen some really big disasters but even some of those films would have made money or lost very little due to these digital rights. 

It is a life saver and at the moment there are many small to medium films being green lighted just because a studio has a solid deal for digital rights with the two giants Amazon and Netflix. So even if the audience does not come to the theaters the economics are such that the film is pretty much safe. The digital revenue enables a 20-30 crore film cover 70-90% of its investment from non theatrical revenue if made by the right people. A big film can cover 60 or even 70 crore from digital and this revenue was not there two years back.

The problem here is that eventually somewhere down the line a film has to be watched only then everybody will be in the black. If the film does not run at the box office then it will have to be consumed on digital or television. There has to be watchers whatever the platform.

The digital giants are in India due to flattening subscription growth in the West which is the business model for these companies. India has this huge potential consumption with a huge population and even its very limited conversion the volume is very high.

They will find out soon enough that making web series with actors not doing well in feature films is not going to help as eventually digital is also a paid form of entertainment like cinema and although everybody would like to believe its a different audience for cinema, digital and television its not really the case especially when bigger numbers are looked for. If the audience is not interested in the films of these people it will be the same for a web series.

The real opportunity here is for our content providers to try and break out and probably make content that could work internationally in the digital space as our own audience is going to be difficult to convert which is used to certain type of entertainment which web series are unlikely to provide.

So the bottom line is this life saving digital revenue will only last if people are actually watching films and this will have to start from the theaters as its first point of release. Its not that a film which gets 10 or 20 lakh footfalls in theatres is going to break out on digital and become a rage while a film getting 1 or 2 crore footfalls is pretty much sure to do well on other platforms.

Its all about getting people into theaters which is not exactly the case at the moment. This can only be done by good audience friendly cinema and once this is happening the rest will easily fall into place. But the question is will the audience get the cinema it wants to see or will it be the Mukkabaaz, Kaalakandi and Aiyaary types week in week out. Only time will tell.