Showing posts with label Multiplexes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Multiplexes. Show all posts

February 3, 2015

Lessons from Single-Screen Theatre Not Learnt by PVR Multiplex

Recently I went to PVR Cinemas at Banjara Hills to see "Pataas". After paying Rs.150/- for executive class for the 11pm show, I felt cheated when the theatre management switched off the AC in a houseful hall packed with a movie-crazy audience. This is what PVR can do. I went with a friend from Mumbai and he was also feeling restless and said this is quite common for PVR to switch off AC especially for South Indian movies. He says they dare not do this for Hindi films, it happens only for South Indian films. South-Indian or North-Indian, I have never understood the rationale for cutting costs by switching off AC  - it is the most annoying way to control your costs. It does two things - it cuts your cinema experience as a viewer by 75 per cent and then, antagonises you against the multiplex. Want proof? Ask all the cinema hall owners maintaining single-screen theatres in Hyderabad and Secunderabad - they are all  abegging- waiting for the quality-conscious viewer who moved on to multiplexes. What happened to the halls which shut down? Many of them didn't have money to upgrade the single-screen theatres to multiplex because their occupancy fell, lease rentals got frozen in time and patronage from regular viewers dwindled. I remember Sangeet, Venkataramana, Sangam, Saptagiri, Deepak, Basant, Kumar - most of them used to cut corners with AC. 

The last time I went to Sangeet theatre was for "Lagaan". In the film, Bhuvan was learning cricket from the English Memsahib and a cute romance was building up in the air. But my mind  turned to the AC switched off. Years later, the owners of Sangeet approached me for a Rs.18 crore loan to build a multiplex in the same premises. They waited for nearly ten years before getting the funds to rebuild a world-class multiplex now. Your best source of funds and private equity is your customer - not the banker or the government. If you are the owner of the theatre, would you like your family members to sweat it out when they are watching a film in your own theatre? That experience at Sangeet hardened me; I vowed never to step inside Sangeet again. Likewise, I like to think, many would have given Sangeet a miss - reasons for an early shut down of an iconic theatre.  There are still arrogant single-screen owners who treat their customers( (viewers) shabbily. They will pay a price one day. The latest example is Venkataramana and Padmavathi theatres in Kachiguda. About a decade back, I went with my family to watch "The Legend of Bhagat Singh". It had a feverish screenplay, rousing performances and mesmerising music by AR Rahman. The climax song was playing on with extra sound "Mujhe Rangggg Deeeee Eeeeee Eeee Eeeee Eeeeee" and we were about to cry. But we didn't know where the tears were coming from - my family looked at each other as we wanted to empathise with the hanging of Bhagat Singh amidst Rahman's patriotic jingle. We were sweating actually. Those were false tears but for a good cause! I vowed to teach Venkataramana theatre management a hard lesson in customer experience - they cut the AC again after interval. I collected the ticket foils and dashed off a letter to "Times of India", after it got published. I attached a photocopy of the letter and dashed off a letter to The Commissioner of Police that most theatres especially in RTC X Roads and Kachiguda were not keeping the AC on. I was told, for the nth time that AC means air-cooled not air-conditioned. I told the representative in police HQ that I was paying for continuous supply of cool air. The Commissariat promised action. I went back with hope. Lo! and behold, the ensuing weekend saw simultaneous raids in all the theatres I complained against  - for errant AC supply.  I felt elated and satisfied that police listens and punishes the culprits. It gave me confidence to take on issues before an RTI Act came into being. But Venkataramana theatre management went back to old ways - with adhoc car parking and wishy-washy AC. After many years, they are facing the heat of competition that will eventually wipe them out - INOX Kachiguda is grabbing segments in Sec A and Sec B audiences in the most thickly-populated and film-crazy belt in the twin cities. Occupancy is down and dwindling. 


Do I need to drum up more examples of why being stingy with facets of customer experience  never helped? On the other hand, look at the success examples which never took its audience for granted. They grew and retained loyalty, and with help from sound Financial Management  either reinvented their models or turned profitable. Examples, Tivoli, Shanti, Sudarshan 70mm. It doesn't take long for a crappy-valued promoter like PVR Cinema to go the way of those who shut shop because of giving sub-optimal experience to their patrons. Love your patrons or be prepared to shit bricks one day, PVR.

#Single-screen #Multiplexes #Entertainment #PVRMultiplex #AirConditioninginCinema #MovieReviews #TheatresinHyderabad #TheatresinTwinCities 

January 8, 2013

Old Theaters in Hyderabad - Some Nostalgia

Tarakarama 70mm which until recently degenerated into exhibiting B-grade movies is finally re-opening again with renovation and new-age sounds for the cine-lovers in Kachiguda. Most likely it is going to be the first movie of 2013 that will be screened – “Nayak” starring Ramcharan Tej. It is next to the newly opened INOX (earlier known as Parameshwari and Maheshwari). I have had some great memories associated with most of these single-screen theatres which were all within a kilometer of our residence in Narayanguda. We used to be excited by the prospects of going to every movie around our home with large cutouts of heroes. Shanti 70mm, Deepak theatre were the closest theatres at that time, literally a stone’s throw. There were also Kumar 70mm which used to screen some of the finest English films and I remember watching "Ten Commandments" and "Omar Mukthaar" there. Shalimar theater never came of age and by the time it did, it started showing sleazy movies and eventually became a Marriage Function Hall.




Shanti has had an amazing run - hit after hit, many flms running for 50 days to 100 days so it was boring as we were impatient every Friday to catch up with the latest movie. That’s when having a handful of theatres in vicinity helped a film-obsessed family like ours. Shanti had a magnificent façade, and an elevation that makes it look like a mansion that survived the ages. It had unlimited parking space for any wheeler you drove with, maintained smoking spaces way back in the 70s. It has one of the biggest screens even today and maintains the biggest number of A-class tickets. In those days, the theatre had a water pond, atleast two aquariums which used to intrigue us, and had two entrances which are serpentine ranches with a thick red carpet segueing the entire plinth area of the staircase sans steps. Walking up was as much a pleasure as walking down after the screening. Now, Shanti theatre has only one way staircase, the other staircase is shut for “strength” reasons, and has just one aquarium. The water pond is dry and abegging for maintenance. But the theatre remains a nonpareil for single-screen theatres. I always wondered, for a theatre of that space, you can have a multiplex the size of Cineplanet near Medchal road.


Srinivasa 35mm-Venkatesa 70mm (now converted into Legend Apartments) had some terrific movies celebrating many box-office hits. Venkatesha 70mm had an open ticket counter and a flat ranch for balcony tickets next to the A-class almost like “Vaikuntham complex” in TTD. Bapu uncle’s most famous mythological “Sampoorna Ramayanam” completed an year of running or so in Venkatesha 70mm and I remember even as a toddler being carried to the 100-day “Shatadinotsvam” of the movie. The last movie I watched there was even a Mani Ratnam film “Donga Donga”. Srinivasa 35 mm was more compact and carried many low-budget films especially films made by SV Krishna Reddy, Vijaya banner and Ramoji Rao which became blockbuster movies like “Yamaleela”, “Brindaavanam” and “Mayuri”.

Deepak theatre always struggled for good movies and most movies running there were re-runs of movies or second-releases. "Ekalavya" was one film starring Krishna which I remember amongst a few first-releases there. A golden opportunity for Deepak theatre owners came even in early 2000s for reviving the fortunes of “failed” perception about the theatre. It was for exhibiting a successful movie made by Gunnam Gangaraju called “Aithe” which became a sleeper hit in those days. The owners were so hell-bent on ruining their chances of success and adding to their woes, that the movie which was running well was removed for some nondescript dubbed English movie. Since those days, the theatre is winding down and is on way to make way for another Apartments.

Basant Talkies was another lesser known but was still walkable for us. I remember watching some great entertainers by Superstar Krishna in that theatre. Most of those films were multi-starrers, surprise, not at all uncommon, as they are now. I remember watching atleast one movie of Krishna co-starred each with Thalaivar Rajnikanth and also with megastar Chiranjeevi. There was also a movie in Basanth Talkies starring Chiranjeevi and Sridevi, in which Chiranjeevi is a rapist and Sridevi, the victim claws her way back into forcing Chiranjeevi to marry her. I don’t think this kind of justice is desired by anybody in today’s world but those were the stories those days and the films. Basant Talkies has since become a mega-posh apartment called “S.V.Basanth” and celebrated is third or fourth anniversary recently. But the memories of Basanth talkies remain fresh for us, it had some great action movies mostly by Doondi and Krishna combination.

Then there was a theatre closer than any of the above those days which had a great run almost parallel to the legendary English movie-screening theatres like Sterling, Skyline and Liberty. It used to be a theatre called “Kishore”. The theatre had a swashbuckling entrée one day. It was advertised in all English dailies and the movie was called “Asha” or something starring Jitendra and actress Reena Roy and another heroine. We didn’t go for the movie but the theatre became an addiction soon for us. It kept rotating movies with amazing regularity. There was an ANR and Jayaprada movie called “Bucchibabu” with great songs but it became a flop. We didn’t go for that too, surprisingly. Our chance came for some James Bond movie. I think it was “The Spy Who loved me” and we fell in love with the theatre. It had long steps leading to the entry door of the theatre, and the ticket counter was so contiguous to the main door that you could pick it up and decide whether to go in or out depending on whether it was “housefull” or not. That arrangement made us feel very good and very special, we never saw such arrangements anywhere except maybe “Liberty” theatre. Kishore theatre had some great releases and I remember also a spine-chilling experience of watching a movie called “Alien”. My dad was away on a tour and my mother was in no mood to watch an English film but the theatre was so close to our residence - we used to literally come home during Interval time. She goaded me to take my younger brother to the movie. The movie was frightening and turned out to be one of the eeriest movies I saw in my childhood, I was courageous all through but my brother gave up and closed his eyes everytime some creature erupted out of somebody’s stomach in the spacecraft or space. I don’t remember anything about the movie except seeing my brother frightened and crying sometimes and this alien creature wreaking havoc on one being after another. My brother was pleading me to take him home. But I remained till the end as we never learnt walking out was an option midway in a cinema. That has become ingrained till this day, except that there were two movies which I never could sit through and one of them surprisingly was “Khushi” of Pawan Kalyan. The last movie we watched at Kishore after it was re-opened as “Sai Kishore” was the Walt Disney film “Alladin”. There was a time when my father advised the owners and prepared a project report converting it into a better complex for shopping while being an exhibition centre for movies. Alas, the owners never acted upon  the project report  of my dad, never paid him, and soon, they went down the drain. Later, the complex became Panchavati supermarket and some EAMCET centre but the bulk of the property has since become litigant and now languishing.

Then of course, Parameshwari and Maheshwari were as close to our home and were easily the pickiest of the theatres in those days. It was the only theatre in Hyderabad to have an escalator and boy! it was an exhilirating experience. The construction of the theatre and the days of exhibition were always associated with plenty of hype and glamor. It had the best image those days, even better than Sangeet in Secunderabad and soon became the most coveted theatre in twin cities before multiplexes came on stage. “Hum Aapke Hain Kaun” was the last of the films I remember having watched, and like many, we watched it many times. But there was a class differentiation between Parameshwari crowd and Maheshwari audience. Maheshwari was on top, and you had a majestic ranch leading to the entrance, there were atleast 200 youth dressed in gawdy clothes those days, hanging out on those ranches, giving the impression that it is always “houseful”. The movie which my parents saw was a special screening of the film “Sharaabi” invited by T.Subbirami Reddy himself for a special gathering of guests. Parking was shared with many other shops in the complex and there was also a funny, long “linga” type structure with the crampiest of parking spaces. It was the Bank of India Regional office and I remember having gone there a couple of times for an “audit” of the branch and staring mostly at the crowds waiting to catch up with the films at the two theatres. It is always a mystery, why the two theatres fell to a more artificial, blood-red compact complex of INOX. I watched a slew of movies like “Genius” and “Ko Ante Koti” in INOX recently, but the soul of theatre audience was missing, everybody is so well-behaved that I felt sleepy after some time. I wondered whether I was at the theatre or at an opera where everybody wears a stiff upper lip and hardly enjoyed the spontaneity of emotions that can engulf a crowd in an old-screen theatre.

The theatre that was closer to us was Tarakarama 70mm which I started this nostalgic account with. It was owned by N.T.R family and it had a nice night-lit statue of deities at the entrance. N.T.Rama Rao in those days commissioned Ramayana story in pictures by Bapu uncle and that was spread over neon-lit ceilings spread over 2500 sq.feet in the main lobby. It still remains there,if I remember, the last movie I don’t even remember in this theatre. Tarakarama has had some great hits in those days, but the two movies I remember vividly have been Amitabh Bacchan’s “Don” and one movie based on Yaddanapudi Sulochana Rani’s novel called “Agni Poolu”. According to hearsay, N.T.Rama Rao built quite a few theatres for his children – boys and girls. The boys’ names were bearing “Krishna” as surname (Balakrishna, Harikrishna and so on) while the girls in the Nandamuri family were surnamed as “..Easwari” (Bhunvaneshwari, Purandareshwari and so on). Tarakarama was as well maintained as Ramakrishna 35mm and 70mm those days. NTR had divided his property amongst his dozen odd children but the will of the family, it seems, never allowed any family members to dispose off the property at anytime for commercial resons. As a descendent and a beneficiary of NTR Family, you can enjoy the rentals and the benefits of ownership but you can never change the nature of the original property nature. Which is why amongst all theatres, NTR family-owned theatres never changed the nature. There was a Ramakrishna Horticultural Studios at nacharam, an NBK enclave housing the subregister’s office near Musheerabad X Roads, a Ramakrishna theatre complex in Abids and of course, Tarakarama theatre amongst many properties. I wonder whether such wills are feasible in law or practical in the fast-changing dynamics of the Real Estate market in Hyderabad. There are others like Odeon, Sudarshan 70mm which are converting to apartments. But Tarakarama is all set to re-open its second innings and for cine-lovers, its another complex which will hopefully give a good experience like Tivoli 2.0.

A few other theatres I remember were Royal Talkies which aired the famous "Shankarabharanam", Dilshad, Zamarrud, Santosh, Sapna, and of course Surya 35mm and 70mm. Surya has aired some of the best English movies too outside of Skyline theatre, and has now converted to Prajay Apartments. Growing up in Hyderabad gave a great experience for movie-goers thanks to all these old-style theaters which are now either being replaced by apartments or by multiplexes.I hope many of you will reminisce the stuff I outlined above. Do share your experiences, anyways.

May 19, 2012

Single-Screen Theatres Vs. Multiplexes, again!

Deepak, Odeon join the growing list of theatres in Hyderabad losing out to the incessant march of Realtors tearing down buildings for flats. Deepak theatre in Narayanguda used to be a flop movie theatre - it was always getting renovated and remodelled and we used to occasionally watch movies but never got the limelight of stand-alone theatres like Shanti 70mm and Sudarshan 35mm etc.

Odeon complex sprung up relatively new in the RTC X roads but even three theatres in a portly campus hasn't helped them to make profits. Whats happeening to the single-screen theatres? As 80 per cent of all movies I ever watched were in these kind of theatres - the whistles, the papers splintered, the Rangoli on the floor adjoining the screen, the curtain-raiser and the curtain-closer, the non-discreet tring tring sound of the can opener pinching the cool drinks at interval time, the vent-out of feelings and emotions which is hardly visible in multiplex screens (where everybody is "dignified" and watch movies with a stiff upper lip).

I have mentioned in an older post about the long list of theatres pulled down for property development. One major issue facing these single-screen owners is the low rentals. Last week, I watched "Gabbar Singh" at Devi 70mm and was amazed at the high-quality of sound, visual grandeur and the elevation not to mention the ecstasy and the madness of 1750 people. Between the three segments of ticket prices, the theatre collects Rs.49000/- per show at an average of Rs.28/-. And for this, the management gets an approximate rental of Rs.3 lacs per week, sometimes lower at Rs.2.30 lacs. This is the theatre rental in a prime area of RTC X Roads which is the heart of Nizam area. In the plush single-screen theatres of Kukatpally, the rentals are close to Rs.1.50-1.80 lacs per week. So, in a year of 52 weeks, the rentals come to Rs.1.56 crs. Thats the income of these theatres. You will be aghast to know that these rentals are not even close to what Marriage Halls earn in a day. Even if the marriage halls are vacant for 150 days in a year, they give better rentals than Cinema Halls.

No wonder, cinema hall owners with vast acres are merrily converting their properties for development. Sudarshan 70mm, near RTC X Roads, already converted into Housing complex is charging Rs.1.00 crore for each flat. What ails the single-screen theatres is a combination of many factors - 1.Apathy of film Producers 2.Slab System of Rentals (which encourages big-star movies) 3.Fear of falling occupancies - which makes them hang on to poor rentals 4. Falling patronage of A-class crowds 5. Low Financial Reserves to recreate Multiplex Screens. For e.g the owners of Sangeet 70mm had a gala time for so many years, but eventually they lost out to multiplexes and had to seek huge loans and capital to begin the ongoing work on multiplex in Secunderabad. On the other hand, Tivoli/Lamba complex was created as a fine multiplex lookalike with better planning and fiscal management.

Single-screen theatres wont fully die down but unless they have better vision and planning and help from Film Producers Council, the writing is on the wall. I can't resist ending this piece without rendering an old joke about Deepak cinema. One day, former Chief Minister late T Anjaiah was passing by Deepak theatre and saw the board "Under Renovation". He remarked to his Secretary who read the board - "Oh I see, its an English movie."

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