Bollywood’s Blockbusters: The Rise of the Indian Multiplex Theater and its Impacts

Film and cinematic practices hold a large weight as both an indicator of and force for social, economic, geographic, and political change.¹The title for this essay is drawn from Priya Joshi, Bollywood’s India: A Public Fantasy. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 96. This is particularly true in India, where Bollywood has made cinema an integral part of daily life in the nation. In the period from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s, India saw a significant rise in the number of multiplex theaters located around the country, particularly in or in close proximity to transnational malls. This rise was closely associated with India’s relationship to the international financial sphere, as the government created state policies that deregulated the media industry to increase privatization and become accepted as a part of global modernity. As a result, the growth of the multiplex, as well as the “malltiplex,” led to the Westernization of the industry through the consolidation of the leisure industries with increasingly consumerist goals, an increased socio-spatial stratification both economically and geographically, and the creation of New Hindi Cinema.

The primary economic policy driving this privatization was the decreased taxes imposed on multiplex theaters.²Joshi, Public Fantasy, 109. As a result of these economic incentives, more multiplex theaters were built and single-screen theaters were shut down. In addition to decreased taxes, the multiplex allowed owners to differentiate ticket prices based on audience demand, required lower occupancy rates to break even as compared to the earlier 1,000-seat “movie palaces,” and allowed the theaters to show a more diverse array of films.³Tejaswini Ganti, Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 369n17.; Vemulakonda Sai Srinivas, “Growth of Multiplex and Its Impacts – An Indian Cinema Experience” (presentation, Cinema of India: Flashback of 100 years and scripting for the future, Banaras Hindu University, April 16-18 2015). This programming flexibility is essential in India, where “[e]very week there are at least three new Hindi film releases, two new regional films vying for screen time outside their home territory, at least one new Hollywood film and a dubbed version of the Hollywood film,” as well as the films from the previous weeks which are most popular, with word of mouth being the most effective marketing strategy in India.⁴Ravi Gupta, “Film distribution: The changing landscape,” in Routledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas, ed. K. Moti Gokulsing and Wimal Dissanayake (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2013), 328; See also Gita Viswanath, “Crowd, Audience, Genre,” Economic and Political Weekly 42, no. 32 (2007): 3293. The multiplex found more financial success than other types of theaters in India, with multiplexes only making up 5 percent of Indian movie theaters but bringing in 65 percent of revenue.⁵William Nobrega and Ashish Sinha, Riding the Indian Tiger: Understanding India — the World’s Fastest Growing Market. (Hoboken, N.J.: J. Wiley & Sons, 2008), 154, 156. The success in implementing these policies came from two places: the changing economic demographics of the nation, with more people joining the middle classes from 1991—2001 than in the forty years following Indian independence, and an influx of capital from global corporations that “ushered global ambitions.”⁶Joshi, Public Fantasy, 127-128. The rise in the multiplex was not only a response to the rise in individuals with disposable wealth, but also responded to a national desire to inspire individuals to aspire to the possession of disposable wealth, which could be spent in a multiplex or mall.

The growth of the multiplex has worked symbiotically with the growth of the mall in India, creating the new phenomenon of the “malltiplex,” which consolidated leisure activities for those with rising levels of disposable income and legitimized the industry. Single-screen theaters are a “prominent physical and landmark-like presence.”⁷Ganti, Producing Bollywood, 329.In contrast, 75 percent of all multiplexes are located in or next to transnational malls.⁸Amrit Rai, Untimely Bollywood: Globalization and India’s New Media Assemblage (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 135. This is largely because multiplexes benefit the malls themselves, increasing footfalls by 40 to 50 percent.⁹Adrian Athique and Douglas Hill, The Multiplex in India: A Cultural Economy of Urban Leisure. (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2010), 63. The malltiplex, therefore, becomes a “non-place,” which Šarūnas Paunksnis defines as “not about meeting or sociality; it is constructed for very clear economic ends.”¹⁰Šarūnas Paunksnis, Dark Fear, Eerie Cities: New Hindi Cinema in Neoliberal India. (New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 2019), 78. Unlike the single-screen cinema which involves people buying their food from vendors on the street, the multiplex consolidates watching and eating, creating an illusion of choice while really they are being guided by the carefully constructed non-place of the malltiplex.¹¹Rai, Untimely Bollywood, 139-140. The corporate mall is thus able to co-opt the market on entertainment, food, shopping, and advertisement, drawing in new customers as this model “saves time for the people to shop, entertain, and watch movies within the same premises.”¹²Srinivas, “Growth of Multiplex and Its Impacts – An Indian Cinema Experience,” 2. The malltiplex space sacrifices the tradition and culture of moviegoing in favor of financial benefit.

Previously, the Indian film exhibition industry was not a corporate one, but instead based on personal relationships, word of mouth, and a lack of verifiable data. This change came with a horizontal consolidation of the leisure industries, a more corporate and Western structure. To mark this new exhibition industry as distinct, the multiplex theaters formed their own consultative bodies instead of the exhibitors’ associations and drew in management from the hospitality, retail, and television sectors instead of from the single-screen cinemas.

The industrial structure was not the only aspect of the multiplex that corporatized it; new sources of funding turned the cinema into a corporate system as well. The influx of capital from foreign investors, loans from nationalized banks, and mergers and acquisitions with other multinational corporations made the Indian cinema exhibition industry “a legitimate economic business activity.”¹³Srinivas, “Growth of Multiplex,” 6.

Changes altered the nature of film exhibition and contributed to a culture of consumerism in India. In the multiplex, all visible spaces are covered in advertisements, turning the theater into a kind of propaganda for the same ideology which built it: a consolidated consumerist utopia. This shifted Bollywood films and the cultural filmgoing experience from their rootedness in art and tradition to an experience of consumerism.

This consolidation also changed the nature of exhibition data reporting. The earlier Indian exhibition industry was marked by its “fragmented relationship[s] between the production, distribution, and exhibition sectors, and the high rates of entertainment tax borne by exhibitors.”¹⁴Ganti, Producing Bollywood, 347. This meant that in order to counteract the decreased revenue from the taxes, small theaters would underreport their earnings to the point where only about 10–20 percent of the total box office earnings were reported.¹⁵Ganti, Producing Bollywood, 346. The lack of taxes decreased this need, and the consolidation of all aspects of exhibition into one corporate structure reduced the opportunity for these fragmented relationships to exist. Therefore, the consolidation led to an increase in verifiable data and thoroughly reported earnings, a large change in exhibition practices, which brought increased legitimacy to the industry into the global sphere.

The rise of the multiplex led to Indian cinema being seen as an industry worthy of international and corporate investment, with the consumerist nature of the multiplex being associated with the Western cinematic exhibition industries. Many multiplexes are part of chains that are public and traded through stock markets, with investors such as Sony and Twentieth Century Fox.¹⁶Srinivas, “Growth of Multiplex,” 8; Joshi, Public Fantasy, 110. This was a state-sponsored endeavor, as part of an attempt towards “Liberalization, Privatization, & Globalization” where the country looked towards investments from global, private sources.¹⁷Srinivas, “Growth of Multiplex, 6. The multiplexes are often seen as a source of pride for those who live in the nearby area as it is a “marker of modernity,” a symbol that they are on par with global economic, cultural, and geographic trends.

This consumerist shift under a Western lens happened outside of the cinema as well. Many young people in Mumbai work in Business Process Outsourcing, where they often work under Western nicknames like Jackson, Janet, or Peter and speak in a Western accent.¹⁸In 1995, when the political party Shiv Sena came into power, the region formerly known as Bombay was renamed to be Mumbai. From here on, I will refer to the region as Mumbai but quotes will retain their original labeling which may include a combination of Mumbai and Bombay. As Viswanath explains, “this is a generation whose identities are no longer stable and cohesive but rest on shifting grounds dictated by the power of the market.”¹⁹Viswanath, “Crowd, Audience, Genre,” 3291. These same individuals are an important piece of the multiplex and New Hindi Cinema’s fan base, connecting the multiplex to a general rise in Western corporatization coming to the region.

The rise of the multiplex industry has also led to increasing economic and regional segregation. Single-screen theaters were typically a core part of neighborhoods in the center of the city, with the entrance right on the sidewalk and surrounded by public space where individuals could buy food from street vendors, smoke, or purchase tickets from “shady” black market dealers and were built where there were the most people.²⁰Athique, “Cinema as social space,” 407-408.The multiplex theaters, on the other hand, were built in communities that were already “pockets of affluence,” leading to new construction and increased sources of revenue growing in selective areas.²¹Hill and Athique, “Multiplexes, corporatized leisure,” 611 The theaters enforce an economic segregation, as lower-class people were technically allowed to enter, but they were discouraged by “an aesthetic of intimidation.”²²S.V. Srinivas, “Is There a Public in the Cinema Hall?”, quoted in Adrian Athique, “Cinema as Social Space: The Case of the Multiplex,” in The Routledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas, ed. K. Moti Gokulsing and Wimal Dissanayake (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2013), 404. The multiplex is usually distanced from “the crowd” through its location on the periphery of the city. If in more of a traditional metropolitan area, “the multiplex consciously distances itself from its surroundings, cordoned off by traffic-barriers and an expanse of parking spaces for private cars.”²³Athique, “Cinema as social space,” 411-412. The parking areas serve to “mediate” the cinema-going experience for customers, increasing the feeling of personal space from the crowds of the greater metropolis. In addition, the multiplex is noticeably marked by security guards, staff speaking in English, and large entrance halls to feel far from the masses. This leads to a kind of “fortress,” where owners are selling not just the film, but the elimination of the crowd, the creation of personal space, and a feeling of safety.²⁴Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, second edition. (London: Verso, 2006), 223–263.

These new theaters are often not in urban centers, but in new “satellite townships” at the periphery of cities, a type of suburb.²⁵Srinivas, “Growth of Multiplex,” 11. Film producer and entrepreneur Gaurav Dhingra explains that he “will not invest in Bombay. [He is] looking at a particular location in Bombay and what is around it.”²⁶Athique and Hill, Cultural Economy of Urban Leisure, 85. These areas on the outskirts present fewer difficulties and more opportunities for new construction than the inner metropolitan areas.²⁷Hill and Athique, “Multiplexes, corporatized leisure,” 606. Particularly with the goal of creating a feeling of personal space requiring a large amount of mediating territory, it was difficult to access enough land in overcrowded cities like Mumbai. In addition, state policies supported attempts to suburbanize the nation, and it was both a quicker path and less expensive to work outside of the metropolis. The suburb has these benefits while still having access to the urban wealthy as a consumer base, a Western innovation. Sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman explains that, “The temple of consumption…may be in the city… but is not a part of it.”²⁸Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), quoted in Paunksnis, Dark Fear, 82. With cinema on the periphery, wealth becomes mobility, making it “now the gentry – the people with cars – who come to see movies.”²⁹Ganti, Producing Bollywood, 315.

The multiplex is known for its quiet audience and lack of odor, which “allowed customers to put themselves at a distance from the general movie-going public.”³⁰Athique, “Cinema as social space,” 407. This created an “emic space, a sanitized space that excludes otherness.”³¹Paunksnis, Dark Fear, 82. In single-screen theaters, there is a participatory, interactive audience bringing an atmosphere that “can resemble that at a rock concert or a sports match.”³²Lakshmi Srinivas, “Active audiences and the experience of cinema,” in Routledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas, ed. K. Moti Gokulsing and Wimal Dissanayake (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2013), 377. This is often associated with the so-called “cheap crowds” that multiplexes and their wealthier clientele seek to avoid.³³Paunksnis, Dark Fear, 82. Multiplexes use the “substantially higher ticket prices as a mechanism by which a ‘decent crowd’ can participate in leisure activities freed from the necessity of mixing with the plebeian masses.”³⁴Hill and Athique, “Multiplexes, corporatized leisure,” 601. Attendance at a multiplex theater is seen as a “marker of both affluence and good manners.”³⁵Athique, “Cinema as social space,” 407. This shift is connected to the Westernization of the movie theater in the multiplex, as this “silent, immobile and therefore ‘invisible’ audience” is typical of movie theaters in the United States and comparable nations.³⁶Srinivas, “Active audiences,” 377. Again, we see global acceptance as the marker of “true” modernity.

The multiplex’s ability to prevent crowds, including through temporal disbursement with films being shown at staggered times, means that the theater is able “to deliver a sensorial experience of personal space to a clientele residing in some of the world’s more crowded urban centers” in the world.³⁷Athique, “Cinema as social space,” 408. The fortress element becomes exceedingly prominent due to its juxtaposition against the above-average crowding of India’s major cities, particularly Mumbai. This serves as a form of spatial gentrification, differentiating the multiplex space from the traditional culture and structure of the area.

The multiplex is not only designed for the wealthy but for the urban audience in a suburban location, which increases geographic stratification. Producer Mukesh Bhatt explains that he only made films for urban residents, not rural India, as there are no movie theaters or people with disposable income there. He says because of these factors he would not “stoop down [his] sensibilities to [rural residents’] level of thinking.”³⁸Ganti, Producing Bollywood, 324. Cinema was therefore pushed to the interests of urban residents due to the financial constraints of the industry, which led to prejudices around regional differences leading those like Bhatt to see the values and experiences of rural residents as inferior.

Also contributing to social exclusivity, and in contrast with the mainstream Hollywood blockbuster, India’s multiplex led to the development of alternative, art-house films in the period known as New Hindi Cinema. This idea that multiple screens of the multiplex will lead to a diversity of content was a prime argument in favor of the rise of the multiplex; instead of having to fill a large percentage of a 1,000-seat movie palace day after day just to break even, studios could invest in films that might have been deemed too risky or specialized to appeal to a broad audience.³⁹Joshi, Public Fantasy, 109. Out of this came an increase in types of films, but also new, negative associations around films of the earlier industry, with many, as Ganti explains, feeling that the multiplex was “the catalyst for reforming the average Indian taste in film, which had been stunted for so long by the formulaic fare produced by the Bombay film industry.”⁴⁰Ganti, Producing Bollywood, 111. While not necessarily the original intention, this conclusion associates Westernized thinking with a superior level of thinking. Because of the depths of the significance of cinema in the lives of residents of India, the changing perceptions of film would also lead to changing perceptions of culture, meaning an increase in attempts to Westernize Indian culture at large.

But, it is not just “indie” films that have found success, but a new subgenre called “Bollylite,” defined by “large production budgets and scale balanced by a considerable diminishment in subtlety and substance.”⁴¹Joshi, Public Fantasy, 117. There is also the consistent presence of English titles and plots which focus on middle- and upper-middle-class characters, pointing to who the multiplex audience is and who the dominant, “consumable” family is in Indian life. This creates a new filmgoer who is “well versed in English, well traveled and exposed to global satellite television channels and Hollywood cinema.”⁴²Viswanath, “Crowd, Audience, Genre,” 3293. The multiplex also increased American, or Hollywood, influence on Bollywood films, especially as English films went from niche, “foreign films” to a major force. As producer and director Vikram Bhatt explains, “The multiplex audience has made the English film into a competitor.”⁴³Tejaswini Ganti, Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema. (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2013), 177. This demonstrates how the multiplex engages the everyday person in the nation’s global ambitions, by making those ambitions both accessible and aspirational.

In The Muppet Movie, Fozzie Bear says, “You don’t go to Bombay to become a movie star! You go where we’re going: Hollywood.”⁴⁴James Frawley, The Muppet Movie (May 31, 1979; United States: ITC Entertainment, Henson Associates, June 22, 1979), digital.That may have been true in 1979 for the international audience, but it would have been inaccurate after the rise of the multiplex in India from the early 1990s to mid-2000s. This shift marked a consolidation of an increasingly consumerist experience of entertainment, eating, and shopping, economic and geographic socio-spatial stratification, and the development of a new era of Bollywood film: New Hindi Cinema. All of these were shaped by an increasingly globalized and commercialized perspective on exhibition as an industry, and the growth of this corporatized industry was both the cause of greater social, political, economic, and geographic changes and a result of them as well. The Indian “affair with Bollywood [that] is [to] eat movies, sleep movies, and live movies, so much so that Bollywood has become an integral part of their daily lives.”⁴⁵Vemulakonda Sai Srinivas, “Growth of Multiplex and Its Impacts – An Indian Cinema Experience,” (paper presented at Cinema of India: Flashback of 100 years and scripting for the future, Banaras Hindu University, April 2015), 2. As a result, the rise of the multiplex is a defining feature not just of cinematic exhibition practices, but of Indian life itself.

Sophie Mode

Sophie Mode is a sophomore at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie with a double major in Education and Urban Studies. She is particularly interested in city planning and how the media empowers decision makers to alter landscapes. Outside of class, she works with Arlington Partners Against Racism on anti-racist issues in the surrounding school district.