Online streaming will kill the hall, not cinema

Francis Ford Coppola, icon maker of The Godfather saga and one of the grand daddies of Hollywood big screen, shocked many ruminating over the future of cinema as a medium of entertainment at a recent media gala in Delhi.

Big studios such as Paramount and MGM, Coppola declared, would eventually shut shop. Online presence of visual entertainment would wholly become name of the game, with sites such as Netflix and Facebook gradually taking over. The form of entertainment served would blur the line between film and television, in content and format. All this, he believed, is not very far away. Such trends would start becoming evident on a massive global scale within three years.

Coppola’s vision is fascinating. Cellphone and tab users streaming films or TV content from websites legal and illegal is also not an unfamiliar sight out there on the streets.

India, however, could perhaps be further than merely three years from wholly embracing such drastic culture shift. For one, while cinema ticket sales have shown a 22.7 per cent drop in the US since 2002, Bollywood’s big screen trade has only grown stronger over these years.

Plus, consider the alternative options. A big reason why Hollywood is currently reeling is improved television content, plus customised online entertainment content that has caught on among the larger Western audience.

The situation in India is a bit different. Television hardly gives us an experience that can force us to stay at home and give up that idea of an evening out at the movies. The nascent online culture for the Indian market is of high quality too, especially the spoof quota that sundry websites have been doling out lately. But Bollywood seems to have quickly found a way to deal with it. Stars such as Shah Rukh Khan and Alia Bhatt, plus production houses like Yash Raj Films, have shown the industry that rather than be cowed down by websites cocking a snook at them, it is best to join them and use such platforms to augment popularity.

If online entertainment crafted for the Indian market inflicts damage at all, it will be on television. Notice how almost all popular content in the Indian cyber space is modeled in the form of TV shows rather than film.

The threat as far cinema in India is concerned seems to lie on the old-school cinema hall — single screen and multiplex alike. Like elsewhere in the world, the culture of streaming film or TV content has rapidly made inroads into cellphones, tabs and notebooks in India, too. If platforms such as Netflix, Amazon and iTunes end up here with a viable business model, it could bleed the theatres. For one, they counter rising the costs of multiplex tickets. Plus, they let you watch your film at the time and place of your convenience rather than scamper to beat evening rush hour to reach the hall on time.

Superstar-loaded blockbusters could continue raking in bigger profits actually, if size of the screen grew smaller.