Independence Day has emerged as one of the biggest holidays for the box office business with the record of highest collections in a single day.
The combined collections of Rajinikanth-starrer Jailer, Sunny Deol's Gadar 2, OMG 2 staring Akshay Kumar and Telugu language film Bhola Shankar touched the Rs 100-crore mark on August 15.
"This is the first time where box office business for a single day has touched this number in domestic market alone. It is important to note that these collections are not coming from one market or from one language film. It is due to good content across languages that has led to this boost in box office business," said Girish Johar, producer and film business expert.
The Independence Day weekend recorded 11.5 million movie-goers booking tickets, the highest ever for a five-day long weekend on the platform, said Ashish Saksena, COO, Cinemas, BookMyShow.
"More than 1.2 lakh audiences watched atleast two or more of these titles (Jailer, Gadar 2, Bhola Shankar and OMG 2) on the big screen between August 11-15, 2023. Twelve lakh tickets were sold for Jailer and 1.5 lakh Rajinikanth fans watched the film more than once. For Bhola Shankar, over 6.5 lakh tickets were sold on the platform. Gadar 2 recorded a sale of 45 lakh tickets, with close to 20 percent audiences opting to watch the film in a single-screen theatre. OMG 2 registered a sale of 17 lakh tickets on the platform," he added.
As expected, August 15 being a national holiday maintained the momentum generated by Gadar 2, OMG 2, Jailer and Bhola Shankar during the first weekend of their release, said Gautam Dutta, Co-CEO, PVR Inox. "All movies have a strong connect with a diverse audience and geographies and recorded occupancies of over 70 percent across the PVR Inox circuit.”
Occupancy reached 95 percent on August 15 in cinemas across markets which is unheard of in recent times (post covid), noted Johar. "Every show of every film (Gadar 2, OMG 2, Jailer and Bhola Shankar) was houseful, which led to footfalls spilling to other movies where tickets were available like Hollywood films including Meg 2: The Trench (released on August 3) and Oppenheimer (released on July 21)."
Independence Day also saw further spike in ticket prices. Top multiplex player PVR Inox in the June quarter recorded an average ticket price (ATP) of Rs 246, up from 3 percent in Q4 FY23 and 2 percent year-on-year. "The ticket prices have been higher by 15 percent in the post-Covid period and on Independence Day it was up 20 percent versus pre-pandemic level, said Karan Taurani, senior vice-president, Elara Capital.
He added that occupancy has seen a big surge because of the extended Independence day weekend along with positive impact on ticket and food prices. "Occupancy breached pre-Covid level during the long August 15 weekend. Pre-Covid, average occupancy during weekends was around 60 percent and we have seen numbers breaching to reach 70-80 percent during that (August 15 long) weekend. In Q2, FY24, we may see a sharp bounce back in occupancy levels led by healthy box office by Gadar 2, OMG 2 and Jailer," he added.
PVR Inox had expected August 15 to emerge bigger than August 13 (Sunday), which turned out to be the single biggest day in terms of highest-ever admissions and box office. The company had recorded 12.8 lakh footfalls and earned gross box office revenue of Rs 39.5 crore. While the company did not share its August 15 collections, on a pan-India level Hindi releases including Gadar 2 and OMG 2 collected higher revenue than August 13. Gadar 2 surpassed its Sunday collections of Rs 52 crore to Rs 55.5 crore on August 15 whereas OMG 2 saw marginal increase to Rs 16.75 crore on Independence Day from Rs 16 crore.
All the four releases saw a strong rebound on August 15 after dip in their first weekday collections.
"These collections will add value to the shortfall in box office collections of Hindi films recorded in the first half of 2023. It is critical to get these high peaks because we need to cover up the loss. To stay in the game, these high peaks need to be maintained. I am optimistic about the forthcoming releases including Dream Girl 2, Shah Rukh Khan's Jawan, Prabhas-starrer Salar and other Hollywood releases," Johar said.
With all eyes on upcoming big-scale ventures, Taurani pointed out that high dependence on such content can be risky. He said that the number of Hindi films releasing in cinemas has dropped 22 percent in the post-Covid period to 14 films every quarter in FY23 from an average of 18 films every quarter in FY19. This has increased dependence on large budget Hindi films, which currently contribute 82 percent of box office versus 44 percent in FY20.
On the other hand, frequency of successful medium budget films has dropped in the post-Covid period with two mid to small-scale Hindi films reporting collections of more than Rs 100 crore since February 2022 compared to 13 films during FY19-20.
"We do not expect this trend (lesser success of smaller films) to reverse just as it did in pre-Covid times but even a minor change in box office collections of these films would drive better occupancy levels," Taurani said.
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