Indian box office lost more than ₹15,000 crore to the pandemic in 2020, 2021: Ormax Media

Ormax Media has released its annual report, titled The Ormax Box Office Report 2020 & 2021. The report, first launched in 2016, looks at the Indian box office across languages, highlighting key trends in the theatrical sector.

Because of the theatres being shut for several months during the COVID pandemic, the media consulting firm has released a combined edition of the report for the two pandemic-impacted years (2020 & 2021).

The report analyses the impact of the pandemic on the Indian box office. Compared to gross box office of almost ₹11,000 crore in 2019, the cumulative revenues across 2020 and 2021 put together, stood at only ₹5,757 crore, an annual average of less than ₹2,900 crore.

If 2019 is taken as the benchmark, the Indian film industry lost at least ₹15,000 crore at the box office because of the pandemic. The footfalls also came down from ₹103 crore in 2019 to over ₹22 crore and ₹42 crore in 2020 and 2021 respectively.

The pandemic years also saw significant changes in the share of different language industries within the Indian film industries. With 29 per cent share of box office (2020 and 2021 cumulative), the Telugu language industry took the top position, ahead of Hindi, whose share declined from 44 per cent to 27 per cent.

Four Telugu films (Pushpa, Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo, Sarileru Neekevvaru, and Vakeel Saab), feature in the top 10 films across the two years, compared to only three Hindi films (Tanhaji, Sooryavanshi and 83). Spider-Man: No Way Home (Hollywood), Master and Darbar (both Tamil) complete the top 10 list.

Speaking about the report, Shailesh Kapoor, founder & CEO, Ormax Media, said, “The pandemic has severely impacted the Indian box office, with five out of the eight quarters in 2020 and 2021 having zero or negligible business, because of theatres being shut in all or most parts of India. The good news is that the last quarter of 2021 (Oct-Dec) saw excellent recovery, registering gross box office of more than ₹2,000 crore, which reaffirms that the theatrical business is very much here to say.”

Speaking about the growing share of box office from the South Indian languages, Gautam Jain, partner, Ormax Media, added: “The cumulative share of the four South Indian languages went up from 36 per cent in 2019 to 59 per cent in 2020 and 2021, highlighting how these industries managed to navigate through the pandemic with more relative success than Hindi films. While we can expect Hindi cinema to stage a recovery in 2022, the rise of South Indian cinema is a story to watch out for.”

You can read the full report below: