From 'Jawan' to 'Kalki', IMAX zooms in on India as local titles draw blockbuster returns globally

"IMAX earned $15.7 million from Indian releases and that's unprecedented. We have three titles that we did this year, including Kalki, Fighter, and The Greatest Of All Time, which are in the top 15 highest ever grossing Indian language titles globally for IMAX. When I look at the releases in the last few years, eight of the top 15 highest grossing local language Indian titles in IMAX come from the last two years. So, that tells you there is a lot more growing interest in local content than before," Dolci said.

The growing love for Indian movies stems from a changing pattern in content consumption with streaming platforms introducing viewers to a wide variety of content, believes Dolci. "We have always been working on local language movies, but perhaps our efforts were not as intense as they are today, because we were very reliant upon the Hollywood slate. During the pandemic, at a time when there were no Hollywood releases, we thought to pivot more towards local language releases," he said.

The company is now releasing more Indian films in other territories. In 2024, 40 percent of the IMAX global box office from Indian language content came from four key international markets - the US, UK, Japan and Canada.

"In Japan, by the end of November, Jawan will be released and there is a lot of anticipation for it. Earlier, we weren't releasing many Indian films in IMAX, perhaps because it wasn't that immediately understandable that these titles could basically travel so much. A part of that is attributable to the fact that people have developed more diverse tastes, resulting in us supercharging our efforts in local language content," he said.

Now playing: India

Along with Indian films, the Indian market too is doing well for the theatre production major, with the total box office that IMAX delivered in India standing at $23 million last year. In the post-pandemic period, 2022 became the best-performing year for the company after 2019. IMAX had grossed $15.1 million in India in 2019 and $18.9 million in India in 2022.

"In India, we had titles that did extremely well. For instance, Oppenheimer was the top performing film ever released in India. In the history of IMAX in the country, we did $6.2 million in box office for Oppenheimer in India. Avatar: The Way of Water was also an incredible success. In 2023, we also had movies like Pathaan and Jawan, which showed the value of Indian content on our canvas," Dolci said.

IMAX released eight Indian-language films in 2024 and has more titles yet to be announced. Dolci said they will probably end the year with 10 or more Indian titles on IMAX. "We are going to release 10 Indian movies this year. We need to continue on that path and we cannot slow down in that content effort."

Indian content being played on IMAX screens will be one of the biggest drivers for IMAX's growth in India, he said, pointing out that screen expansion is critical. "What we need is more theatres. But, in order to open more theaters, we need to give our exhibition partners the comfort that they will have enough content to play on those screens. And the more you go out of the biggest cities, the more the content preference skews towards Indian movies," he said.

More IMAX screens

While IMAX looks to open more screens in tier II and III cities, its overall plan is to target the 150-screen mark in India. The company had earlier planned 50 screens in five years. Dolci said that the addressable market in India for the next five years is around 150 screens.

It currently has 31 screens in India and has agreements for 14 more. "We have contractually secured an expansion of an extra 50 percent of the network on top of what we have today. We have a fairly good penetration in some of the big metropolitan areas. At the moment, we're looking at expanding in other cities," he said.

Dolci said that from four screens in 2014 to over 30 today, IMAX has come a long way and it sees good opportunities in the country.

India is the eighth biggest market for IMAX after China and North America that have 800 and 400 IMAX theatres. Ahead of India are also the UK and Japan with 60 and 52 IMAX theatres. "I really want India to go above those (UK and Japan) markets because it can," he said.

The company is also exploring single-screen properties for IMAX screens. "Our heritage is being in single-theatre locations. IMAX was a destination theatre, and I see no reason why that model cannot be repeated. Also because it is being repeated in many parts of the world. Last year, we opened a flagship theatre in Sydney in Darling Harbour, which is now regularly one of our top five grossing theatres in the world. That's a single-theatre location. India has an amazing heritage of single-theatre locations and I do know there are some (sites) suitable for IMAX conversion. We have no immediate plans yet, because we haven't identified one (site), but I think there is definitely scope," Dolci said.