Cinema follows commerce to suburbs

In December 1997, Samrat cinema in Goregaon — which happened to be Mumbai’s largest cinema hall with 1,600 seats — remorphed as Cinemax, with a seating capacity of 638. Then came Cinestar at Kandivli, which replaced the 900-seater Sona and re-emerged with 281 seats, complete with push-back seats and popcorn holders. Cinemagic, the 360-seater hall at Andheri (east) where Darpan cinema earlier stood, was also not far behind. And Malad saw the birth of Movietime, a new cinema hall with about 400 seats.

In Bandra, the Gaiety-Galaxy-Gemini complex recently added foursmaller screening halls: the 104-seater Gossip, the 47-seater Gem, the 46-seater Glamour and the 42-seater Grace. These were all originally preview halls used for private screenings of unreleased films.

Explaining why born-again cinemas in the suburbs have slashed their seating capacity, Shravan Shroff of Shringar Cinemas explained, “According to regulations, if a builder wants to shut down his existing cinema, he must rebuild on the same plot a cinema with at least one-third the original capacity and may use the remaining premises for residential or commercial purposes.”

Even established theatres in the suburbs have caught on: Chandan cinema at Juhu was recently renovated, as was the 811-seater New Era at Malad, which cost the latter Rs 1.5 crore. “We changed everything from the seats and the air-conditioning plant to the exteriors and the foyer,” said owner and exhibitor Rajesh Thadani, who said that the competition made it imperative for him to pull up his socks.

Movie-goers will not complain:suburban cinemas run new films regularly as opposed to south Mumbai cinemas where a big-banner film will not be pulled out until replaced by an equally prestigious film. At Chandan cinema, the hugely-hyped Hum Saath Saath Hain was replaced after just three weeks when its collections plumetted, yet the film continues to run in its fourteenth week at Liberty. “Historically, cinemas in town have fared better than those in the suburbs, so it made sense for film-makers to choose a south Mumbai cinema as the flagship release cinema for their films,” informed Shroff. It then became important that the cinema run the film for a longer period.

Also, several movie halls in the suburbs now screen more than just one film each day. Movietime is screening three films at different times, Cinemagic two. The only theatre in south Mumbai that screens anything apart from the main film is Sterling, with its 10.45 pm late night show. “Screening more than one film has advantages and disadvantages,” says Shroff. Themovie-goer has more options at his disposal, but he is often clueless about movie schedules and may end up watching films he never intended to. Shroff makes a case for the multiplex, where different films are up for grabs under one roof.

In fact, multiplexes seem to be the places where suburbia will catch some of its cinema in the future. Four multiplexes are expected to come up in the next two years: at Versova, Sion, on the Goregaon-Malad route, and at Chembur, to be constructed by Zee. Pointed out Shroff, “Earlier, most people would watch films in south Mumbai either because the workplaces were there or because there weren’t good enough cinemas.” Now, he points out, all the offices are shifting to Parel, to Bandra-Kurla, to MIDC in Andheri and beyond. “If you now have swanky cinemas close to where you live, who wants to travel all the way to town?”