baqai
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In a way you are agreeing that movies like Avatar and Don 2 ran full houses and your cash machines went Ching Ching. My understanding is that people are drawn to multiplexes for the movies. Good movies are the life blood of multiplexes. Concession stalls and food courts are there to court the movie goes for an wholesome outing. Some malls are surviving just because they house multiplexes which draw huge crowds. Movies are the draw which other retailers are capitalizing to sell their wares.
Retail space in malls with multiplexes will fetch high premium and can go as high as Rs. 30,000/sft here. I know this because my cousins are building a five lakh sft mall which will house 12 screen multiplex here in Hyderabad.
I don't know how big is your Atrium multiplex and how many screens you have? I am sure it is a huge undertaking from the looks of it. With such stakes it is a losing proposition to ban bollywood altogether. If I were you I would be nervous about my job security.
In the follow up post which i guess you missed i gave the top 5 grossing movies at Cinemas, the top 3 slots were/are Pakistani movies, Sir you will have to take my word for it, the life line of a cinema is Concessions (in respect to revenue earned) not ticket sales. Different environment makes crowd react differently, here in our city Atrium was a breath of fresh air to people who were hungry for entertainment, yes i do agree that the Cinema was the reason mall itself ran in the first place. People regardless of the movies running WILL come and ask "kon si achi chal rahi hai" and will sit down and watch the movie, there is a small scale Cinema in Saddar which only caters to truck drivers, conductors, labor just because it is the only place showing Pashto movies, every night 9pm show is full with Rs 150 PKR a ticket.
Atrium is 3 screen multiplex, it was the first ever 3D digital cinema in Pakistan, it still is in top 3 cinemas in Pakistan as far as revenue generation is concerned. Hollywood movies often come in Packages i.e. when a distributor gets a big movie often they are forced to get a smaller movie which they may or may not run depending on the time slots available and amount of movies in hand, these smaller movies can easily be space fillers.
Just to give you an idea of margins involved, one small glass of cold drink which a Cinema can easily sell for Rs 100-150 PKR cost them no more than 15 Rs PKR ... on average in winters the consumption of small glass of cold drink can be anywhere between 1000-1500 glasses, in summers you can easily increase that figure, you do the maths of margins made on one small glass of cold drink in a day i still haven't talked about popcorns, coffee, tea, nachos and others.
Oh by the way next time you go to a theater or to any restaurant which serves drinks from a machine (not can or bottled) please do insist on getting a drink WITHOUT ice, we are always happy to give it without ice because it means it takes less of the drink to fill up the glass and that results in more cost savings for us.
Running a theater is not that simple, it's an art and science which people often find hard to believe, how to upsell a particular movie, how to fill a certain time slot, which time slot should go to which movie, when should we have more warm popcorns than regular, which time slot would need more nachos than popcorns, when to make theater more chill than usual, which seat selection is less desirable and need to be filled and how etc etc that all is just tip of the iceberg and everything involved results in making more $$$$$$'s
Thanks for the concerns about my job security but i am not directly employed by any Cinema, I am a certified level-1 Engineer from Kinoton/Barco for their digital projectors along with trained in Musion Eyeliner 3D Holograms system and Dataton Watchout system, current i offer freelance consultation to existing and upcoming cinemas along with being the Technical Director at the firm i work at. Since I was part of the management at the Cinema and was involved in decision making I got the learn the fascinating world of theater management and these long posts just are out of passion and to share some knowledge to clear misconceptions
Coming back to the point,
Will banning Bollywood movies result in reduction of revenue generation for cinemas here? Yes
Would banning Bollywood movies result in closing of Cinemas and people loosing their jobs? No