Regional cinema slips at the box office
1 min read 14 Jun 2023, 10:56 AM ISTPunjabi film Maurh has failed to draw audiences to theatres, having made ₹2.5 crore over its opening weekend. It stars Ammy Virk in the lead role.
PremiumNew Delhi: Punjabi film Maurh has failed to draw audiences to theatres, having made ₹2.5 crore over its opening weekend. It stars Ammy Virk in the lead role.
Bollywood isn’t the only one affected by the growing penchant for southern cinema across India. Cinemagoers are also giving a tepid response to films in other regional languages such as Marathi, Punjabi, Gujarati and Bengali.
The trade experts said, these smaller regional films have been slow in recovery from the pandemic, garnering less than 40% of pre-covid traffic at the box office. Except for a few hits in Punjabi and Marathi in the first half of last year, the second half was witness to more flops.
Also, just a handful of OTT players such as SonyLIV, ZEE5 and Amazon Prime Video are showing any interest in acquiring streaming rights of these films, which in turn is affecting the ability of producers to invest in new productions. Experts feel that the current scenario is making producers go slow in resuming the flow of regular releases as audiences have become more selective.
Regional language film hits have been pretty scattered so far and even regular slate of releases haven’t resumed like pre-covid times, at least in languages like Marathi and Bengali. The last big Punjabi money-spinner, Saukan Saukne starring Ammy Virk made ₹22 crore within a fortnight of its release last May in markets like Punjab and Delhi NCR, as per trade website Box Office India.
Marathi cinema too has seen titles like Sher Shivraj, Chandramukhi and Daagdi Chaawl 2 perform decently, but the hits have been few.
Just like Hindi cinema, viewers of regional language content too have been exposed to programming from across the world and have become selective. Filmmakers are at a complete loss because there is no clarity on what will run and several films are lying unsold to streaming platforms or waiting to take the plunge and go for a theatrical release because the producers are just not sure if they will work.