Impact of Covid-19 on Indian Film Industry

 Introduction

    India is the largest film producing country in the world. Mumbai city is the heart for the Indian movie making. Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru and Kolkata also significant Indian cities in Indian movie making. Almost in all regional languages films are produced in India, but Hindi language cinema dominates the industry in terms of worth and making of movies.  There are many other language cinemas like Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Bhojpuri and Bengali also famous industries.  The value of Indian film industry is nearly 200 billion Indian rupees (more than 10 million dollars).  Many people are getting livelihood in this industry, nearly 3 lakhs people working directly and approximately 5 lakhs people working indirectly across the country.

How Covid-19 affected the Indian film industry?

We can say before covid outbreak Indian film industry had a golden time. Nearly 1800 movies were released in the year including all Indian languages, many movies shaked box office.  Number of movies released overseas and collected remarkable revenues.  Amir Khan’s “Damgal” and Prbhas’s “Bhahubali” movies kept Indian film industry name on world film books. 

Covid outbreak suddenly changed indian film strategy.  Lockdown made all the indian film activities shut for many months. After lockdown, film making slowly started, but Covid second wave again showed its sadism.  

The process of gradual  reopening started from lockdown, but the impact of Covid-19 on all Indian industries and businesses is severe.  Every sector has been affected by Covid outbreak, and there is no exemption for Indian film industry. Film industry is one of the major Covid victims.  Lockdown forced shut all types of film activities like shootings, new releases, theatres and cinema shows.  Lockdown hit the Bollywood film industry immediately, the after across the country.  Major releases were postponed.  Even after reopening from lockdiown people are not interested in rushing to theatres, due to the fear of Coronavirus and Social distance.  

The people of the film industry, those who survive on film production, distribution, music, live events and working in theaters etc. have lost their employment.  Especially major releases at the time of festivals for Indian cinema.  But Covid smashed the festival revenues of the films.  Film makers including artists, theater owners and employees are pushed into a financial crisis. 

The Indian film industry lost nearly 70% of the revenue in 2021, and theaters are likely to remain closed for a few more days.  The major revenue of the film industry is from theaters.  All the producers postponed their releases.  This situation is not only in Bollywood, but also in the entire Indian film industry.  But the impact is a little bit more on Bollywood, this is because, after 1st lockdown, big films were released in Telugu, Tamil and Kannada, whereas no releases from Bollywood hoped for the scenario to get better.  So, there was no revenue for the Bollywood industry.  It will take a few more months to release big films in Hindi. The regional language producers will worry about their state or region, whereas Bollywood producers worry about the national market.  Covid-19 not only affected Indian markets, but also there was a big blow on the overseas market of Indian films.  Indian films have to lose nearly 50% of the revenue.  The threat of Covid-19 brought Cinema, the making of films, screening, and viewing to a standstill, and the impact is being felt across all segments of the film industry.  

The national wise lockdown is being lifted by the state governments in stages, but it is still restricted to the gathering of people. The theaters and multiplexes are most affected by these restrictions.  And it  is directly affecting Indian film Industry.

Alternatives for film release

Film producers are now looking at digital releases of their movies on OTT(Over The Top) platforms as the people avoid coming out to theaters.  The movie lovers also have a new choice that is OTT platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime etc. Over the last two years, OTT is the only choice for the movie makers as well as movie lovers.  But theatre owners fear that online releases would vanish their theaters.  Nearly 10 thousand theaters are there across the country.  Thousands of employees working in them. As the OTT releases increase these workers definitely lose their jobs, and this situation again leads to one more problem.

We hope all things get well soon.