Opinion How middle-class India got priced out of movies
Soaring ticket rates, overpriced popcorn, and dying single screens are pushing families out of theatres — and threatening cinema’s most democratic space.
For decades, single screens were the real custodians of Indian film culture. Today, from over 20,000 screens in the 1980s, India is down to fewer than 6,000 India’s love affair with the big screen has survived cable TV, pirated CDs, downturns, even a pandemic. But what technology couldn’t break is now quietly being priced out. Across cities, the average family does invisible math before booking a movie: Four surge-priced tickets, 18 per cent GST, convenience fees, and popcorn that costs more than lunch. The numbers add up fast and increasingly they are against going to the movies.
The affordability trap
Inside a multiplex, even the food counter feels class-coded. The Supreme Court recently flagged “exorbitant” F&B rates — popcorn above ₹500, soft drinks sold at several times the retail price, and water bottles at Rs 100. For a lower-income or stretched middle-class family, the message is unspoken but unmistakable: This space isn’t meant for you. The Multiplex Association of India cites a national average ticket price of Rs 130, a figure held down by small towns and weekday cuts. The urban truth is different. PVR INOX reported an average ticket price of Rs 254 in Q1 FY26, alongside record per-head food spending. The big screen is becoming premium by design.
Tax tweaks haven’t helped much. Tickets below Rs 100 attract 5 per cent GST, but almost every multiplex ticket crosses into the 18 per cent slab. Karnataka’s Rs 200 cap offered relief, but without regulating concessions, the movie-night bill remains stubbornly high.
The slow death of the single screen
For decades, single screens were the real custodians of Indian film culture. Affordable, and community driven, they brought Shah Rukh to small towns and Rajinikanth to working-class neighbourhoods. Today, they are nearly extinct. From over 20,000 screens in the 1980s, India is down to fewer than 6,000. Many are barely hanging on. High costs, lack of easy credit, content tilted toward multiplex-friendly films, and the marketing muscle of corporate chains have pushed them to the margins.
Opening a theatre is even harder. An applicant requires nearly 20 licences — fire, police, safety, seating, signage and separate NOCs for everything. In 2022, the Centre announced a Model Theatre Policy, promising single-window clearance, but nothing has moved since. Without political will, India is slowly regulating its most democratic cultural space out of existence.
OTT didn’t kill theatres
It’s fashionable to blame OTT for empty auditoriums. But OTT didn’t lure audiences away; it simply absorbed those priced out. For a few hundred rupees a month, often bundled with mobile data, families can watch new films on 32-inch TVs and 6-inch phones without budgeting for snacks. One cinema outing now equals a month of OTT. The economics are brutally simple. OTT may lack the communal electricity of a first-day-first-show, but at least it offers access, something the theatrical ecosystem no longer guarantees.
A business model that isn’t benefitting anyone
From a boardroom perspective, high-margin F&B is irresistible. India’s biggest multiplex chain earned more growth from food than tickets last year. It shut loss-making screens and doubled down on premium neighbourhoods.
But the strategy is cannibalising its own future.
The overall footfall and occupancy remain low and the survival of films still depends on discounts and aggressive promotions. Meanwhile, PVR INOX reported a loss of Rs 114.3 crore in FY24, meaning even the “premium” model is struggling to sustain itself. If audiences are paying more, multiplexes are drowning in debt, and producers are barely breaking even, then the question remains: who exactly is benefitting?
Independent filmmakers are paying the price too
The brunt is also felt by independent filmmakers — the creators of India’s most acclaimed small- and mid-budget cinema. Even as these films make us proud on global festival circuits, they struggle to secure meaningful showtimes back home. Many are pushed to odd hours, vanish within days, or release without visibility. After Kanu Behl’s Agra wasn’t able to secure fair release, more than 40 of India’s independent filmmakers, including Varun Grover, Raam Reddy and Leena Yadav recently issued a public open letter, warning that a premium-focused marketplace is edging out the very films that put Indian cinema on the global map.
Cinema as a class-filtered experience
Cinema was once India’s cheapest mass escape. Today, it is being engineered into a class act. If India wants to preserve the democratic joy of cinema, the solutions aren’t mysterious: regulate basic concession prices, bring down F&B rates, implement single-window theatre clearances, and rethink a business model that cannot survive without excluding the very audience it was built for.
The writer is an assistant film research officer, Film & Television Institute of India, Pune. Views are personal
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