Cinemas across India will begin to reopen from today (Friday) with MORTAL KOMBAT being the main attraction in the Hindi circuits. This film did a decent $40 million at the box office in the USA when it was released in April. The Hindi releases are awaiting for a decision as to when Maharashtra will be allowed to open and then announce release dates. There are some districts which are going to be allow cinemas to open and the hope is better news over the next week or two which may allow Hindi films to release sometime in August. The main Hindi film playing when cinemas reopen will be MUMBAI SAGA.

Maharashtra is crucial to Hindi cinemas as around 30% of the all India theatrical revenue for Hindi films in 2019 came from Maharashtra. The state has also suffered the most in India from the pandemic which has made the authorities very cautious. So an uptick in cases will push the opening up further down the line.

There have been many states which has been allowing cinemas to open for some time now but the cinemas were just not opening up due to no content. The Salman Khan starrer RADHE was screened officially in some cinemas and unofficially at other places with OTT print being screened. The small video theatres which have limited collections in Gujarat did play the film. The collections of the film would be in the 18-20 lakh nett range with most of this coming from Gujarat and also Rajasthan thanks to Raj Mandir cinema. Over 80% of the earnings is likely to be from these two circuits.

West Bengal despite extending their lockdown will allow cinemas to open which means films will probably be screened from next week as cinemas start opening. This leaves Maharashtra and Bihar as the main markets for Hindi films which are not allowed to open yet. Bihar was expected to open in early July but it did not materialize.

The process is going to be slow and the most important thing is not the turnout but no more lockdowns where cinemas have to close especially in the main contributing states. If this happens then eventually the audiences will return and the industry will be just one blockbuster away from normality or near normality.