First film theatre was opened in India in the year 1902, and that was in Calcutta. Obviously the purpose was to entertain people with on screen act. The time was a kind of revolution for that generation, because before people only used to see live theatre performance but after the recorded films, the theatre got a new way to entertain people.
The start was for single screen theatre, where in a theatre was built to show one single movie at a time. The world got another revolution and theatres were upgraded with from single to multiple screen.
The earlier platform was to release a film for the purpose of showing it into big cinemas. After smart phones apps came in to the light, movie releasing platform has got options to reach out the selected audience to deliver all sorts of contents. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Voot and many more are the example of such platforms.
As per the present data base over 2 billion population from Asia and Europe are actually getting limited to app based web centers to watch a movie or a T.V serial.
The web platform companies are also creating the content and releasing them only over the internet, because they know the potential of their subscribed viewers. These platforms are beneficiary for both sides, the releasing companies, film makers, distributors as well as the viewers.
Reasons for increased demand of web cinema portals:-
- Pocket friendly– You don’t need to buy expensive tickets to watch your new film in theatre, instead you can get a cheap get subscription of any web portal over your smart phone and can enjoy all new T.V web series or a film.
- Easy to release- From a film company’s point of view, it’s a hectic journey to release a film at theatre, deal with distributor, select the screen, compromise with other production company on release date etc. But here in web portal, you don’t need to be worried about screen and all.
- Many options for viewers- In one subscription, the user can get many options to watch, viewer can watch serials, listen to music, films, documentaries and many more.
As per the data base, after a release of a mega starrer film, a theater expect the good number of public only for first 2 or 3 days and after that people gets reduced and many shows run with a very few attendance. As per last quarter report, many of theatre chains are running on loss. Even when the outside food is not permitted, the ticket prices are high; still the theaters are running on loss, this has many reasons.
- Flop films
- High ticket cost
- Introduction of web cinema
- Expensive food items
- High maintenance cost of theatre
- Heavy cost to pay to buy a new film for theatre
- Heavy tax rate over one ticket
The above reasons are equally responsible for theatres to struggle for viewers.
Conclusion- The aforesaid facts are actually an alarming whistle for theaters, because the last 5 years data base is so shocking to draft a picture of how speedily theatres are losing their viewers and on the other hand the web cinema is adding million viewers worldwide every day. If we multiply the current data base of reduction of viewers then it seems like by the year 2034, the theaters will be totally shut down to operate.
In this situation, a good concept and a fine star cast can work as oxygen for theaters to attract the public towards theatre, but all the movies cannot perform well, some might be a hit and some might be a flop, even a big star movie gets trashed on box office and starves for audience. It’s not necessary for a viewer to come and watch the view to decide the review, the social media , print media all are capable to arrange a pre-review for viewers to decide whether they should pay a high amount of ticket for a particular movie or not. The way web platforms are increasing, it is definitely going to happen that the theatres will be totally shut down in near future.