Cinemas began reopening on Friday in India's cinema capital Mumbai, where viewers are used to lining up to see the same film multiple times and whose stars enjoy near-divine status.
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On Friday, October 22, only a few theaters took advantage of the permission to open, showing the new James Bond and American superhero film
Venom
, as well as older feature films.
“I am an avid cinema lover and I have been waiting for this day for a long time. The last movie I saw was in 2019, before the pandemic started. I'm so glad to be back, ”
said Smer Sagar, 18, after watching
No Time to Die
.
As the pandemic has torpedoed industry around the world, cinemas in the Indian city are hoping next month's blockbusters will draw crowds.
Closures and the surge in coronavirus cases in April and May took Indians away from the big screen, shutting down dozens of small cinemas and putting production companies in a difficult position.
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Many Indians have turned to streaming platforms such as Netflix, which has seen a subscriber boom and has hosted the releases of some new Bollywood movies.
The industry is hoping that a slew of new big-budget films - some of which shot several months ago but not yet released - will revive the industry.
The huge amount of films in reserve will start
showing
from Diwali weekend - the festival of lights, in early November - with
Sooryavanshi
,
starring
actor Akshay Kumar, one of Bollywood's biggest stars.
India's most prolific film industry in the world was worth $ 2.5 billion in 2019. And foreign-language films are also regularly successful.
Biryani forbidden
The state of Maharashtra and its capital Mumbai are among the last to reopen theaters, multiplexes and auditoriums, but for the industry, it is
"very, very important,"
Komal Nahta, analyst for the AFP told AFP. film industry, which states that
"Maharashtra contributes about 20% of total cinema receipts in India and Mumbai is the nerve center of Bollywood"
.
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The occupancy rate of the rooms is limited to 50% and no refreshments can be served, far from the pre-pandemic era when spectators of large multiplexes were served biryani and ice cream in their seats.
Moviegoers should wear masks at all times.
But if the staff must be fully vaccinated, there is on the other hand no vaccination obligation for spectators.
"The effects of the pandemic will persist, but we are optimistic that 2021 will bring audiences back to movie theaters
,
"
said Ajay Bijli, president of India's largest movie theater chain, PVR.
Mr. Nahta predicts that the public
"will come back in force and that the revenues will probably exceed anything that one can imagine"
.
