Aamir Khan explains how Chinese films rake in Rs 4,000+ crore; laments India’s limited movie screens: ‘We have only 10,000, they have over 1 lakh’

Besides his exceptional acting skills, what makes Bollywood icon Aamir Khan a beloved figure among people is his deep-seated understanding of cinema and its ever-evolving business model. Although his last two movies – Laal Singh Chaddha (2022) and Thugs of Hindostan (2018) – underperformed at the box office, it cannot be ignored that Aamir was the star who introduced Indian cinema to several collection benchmarks. In fact, his Dangal (2016) remains the highest-grossing Indian film worldwide even now.

Recently, he spoke about how the low number of movie screens hinders Indian cinema from soaring to greater heights. Maintaining that China, with almost the same population as India, has 10 times the number of screens that we do, Aamir attributed the hefty box office earnings of Chinese movies to this. “My ambition, as a person who’s part of this industry, is to see more theatres coming up in India; theatres that are more accessible to people. There are vast tracks and districts in the country where we don’t have even a single theatre. I think that is something that we should really focus on: building budget theatres that are affordable for the common person,” he shared during a chat with The Hollywood Reporter India.

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Comparing the situation in India to that of China, he shared, “I think we roughly have about 10,000 screens, among which half are in the south of India. So, when a Hindi film releases, we have about 5,000 screens here at best. China, on the other hand, has 1,05,000 screens. There’s no comparison! Dangal did, I think, Rs 1,300 crore, and yet, it isn’t the biggest hit in China. Their films do Rs 4,000-5,000 crore. That’s because they have so many screens and can access a large audience. When people like a film, its business can be huge. The potential is very high. I think in India, we really haven’t tapped into the full potential of cinema.” Aamir, nonetheless, expressed hope that the government’s initiatives, such as the World Audio Visual & Entertainment Summit (WAVES), would help bring about a change.

Following a three-year hiatus, Aamir is gearing up for a massive comeback with director RS Prasanna’s sports comedy Sitaare Zameen Par, which is gearing up for release. While it is speculated that he has a cameo appearance in Lokesh Kanagaraj’s Rajinikanth-led Coolie, Aamir also has director Rajkumar Santoshi’s Sunny Deol and Preity Zinta-starrer Lahore 1947, which he is bankrolling, in the pipeline.