Gone is the time when Friday used to be celebrated as a festival. All the family members and friend circles had just one conversation for the entire week. First, how was the movie that they saw last Friday and the anticipation of the upcoming movie that would be watching this Friday. In today’s time of binge-watching the pattern has changed entirely.
Shahrukh Khan and Deepika Padukone starrer Pathan is being boycotted. Aamir Khan’s Laal Singh Chaddha failed miserably at the box-office. The empire of the Bollywood biggies is on the verge of decimation. Bollywood is facing the wrath of common people that it once used to influence. This is what is being talked all around. However, data suggests a different picture together.
Bollywood is not the only one sinking
There has been a downfall in the business of the Hindi Film Industry. And it is often compared to the south-Indian film industries and their presence in the Hindi belt. Many south-Indian films like KGF2, Pushpha and Kantara have done great business in the north. Due to this, it became a common perception that while the Hindi film industry is in tatters, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil and Kannada films are doing great.
But this requires a course correction. No matter, how the Hindi Film Industry has been performing, it is still afloat due to its wider base. The movies of nepo-kids may not be working but content is still the king in Hindi Film Industry. If one comes up with good content that has no wrong intention, it would be welcomed by the audiences. However, the same theory is not applicable to the Malayalam industry.
Also read: Manoj Bajpayee questions the ‘missing Hindi’ from ‘Hindi cinema’
Malayalam Film Industry is sinking
Malayalam is a language spoken in and around Kerala. A film industry based out of Kerala, gives the sense of communist propaganda, secular whitewashing and Islamist glorification. But the Malayalam film industry is not limited to this. Rather, it has produced a wide range of cinemas like Meppadiyan that is actually rooted in Hinduism.
The past one year that is 2022 has not been a great year for Malayalam cinemas as over 90% of the Malayalam movies that released from January to December 2022 have flopped. Thus, indicating that the number of flops is much larger than the number of hits or superhits, thus, hitting the industry hard, financially.
Also read: Aranmula Ponnamma: Mother of Malayalam Cinema
Numbers speak the truth
In the past 12 months, the Malayalam film industry in total released 176 movies. Out of these 176 movies, only 17 worked at the box office. Well, did all earn the amount required? The answer is, No. Out of 17 that got a humble audience at the box office, even less than 10 could earn the producers an average above Rs 10 crore. The list includes Bheeshma Parvam, Hridayam, Jana Gana Mana, Kaduva and Thallumaala among others.
This reveals that there is a widening gap in the return of investment for the producers and distributors. As per the estimates released by the Kerala Film Producers’ Association (KFPA), the Malayalam industry is expected to have suffered average losses of over Rs 300 crore in just a year.
M Renjith, president of KFPA said, “The year 2022 did not offer much for the industry in the overall analysis as the number of flops was far bigger than the successful movies. As the content remained the king, there has been a perceptible change in the choices of the audiences.”
OTT and the Covid Pandemic
The emergence of OTT platforms and the Covid-19 pandemic has totally changed the way we consume content or watch cinemas. It is visible that many small and medium scale budget movies do extremely well on the OTT (Over The Top) platform and stayed away from approaching the cinema halls. It is expected that with 5G becoming more popular, the digital viewership will be increasing in the year 2023. So, will the Malayalam film industry be able to keep itself afloat in this year?
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