Gross box office receipts crossed the ₹10,000 crore mark for the first time in 2019, making it a historic year for cinema in India, according to Mumbai-based media consulting firm Ormax Media’s Indian Box Office Report 2019.
Total gross earnings across all languages rose almost 12% last year to ₹10,948 crore, from ₹9,810 crore in 2018, according to the report. The reduction in GST slabs helped boost net earnings at an even faster pace of 19% to ₹9,490 crore.
Ironically, the biggest gainer was Hollywood, with its productions registering a 31% jump in gross collections (across all languages, in original as well as dubbed versions) to touch an all-time high of ₹1,595 crore. That helped it overtake Tamil and Telugu to the number two spot in terms of earnings after Hindi. Till last year, Hindi led the race followed by Tamil and Telugu, with Hollywood placed fourth.
The biggest film in India last year was not an Indian production but the Marvel superhero movie Avengers: Endgame that grossed ₹433 crore in all the language versions. It was followed by three more films that went beyond the coveted ₹300 crore figure — the Hrithik Roshan-Tiger Shroff bromance War (₹357 cr.), multilingual action thriller Saaho (₹349 cr.) and the controversial Kabir Singh (₹321 cr.).
Data box for box office story
Hollywood also increased its box office share last year. While Hindi led with 44% share of the gross domestic box office, Hollywood (in all language versions) stood second with 15% share, followed by Tamil and Telugu at 13% each.
According to Shailesh Kapoor, CEO and founder of Ormax Media, a big takeaway from the report is the increasing success of multilingual cinema. Besides Avengers: Endgame , The Lion King did well for Hollywood with ₹184 crore gross box office earnings across all language versions. “ Saaho got 60% of its earnings from the Hindi than the Telugu or Tamil versions,” said Kapoor.
Telugu film Sye Raa Narasimha Reddy , dubbed and simultaneously released in Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil, featured in the top 10 earners, having grossed ₹196 crore. “It shows that the success of Baahubali was not one off,” said Kapoor. “Hindi film industry will continue to get challenged by dubbed versions of the South and Hollywood films,” he added. No wonder all eyes are now trained on the forthcoming S.S. Rajamouli film RRR and Prashanth Neel’s KGF Chapter 2 .
Other than Hollywood, the other industries that posted box office growth in 2019 were Kannada (36%), Malayalam (17%), Tamil (14%), Punjabi (13%) and Hindi (10%). On the other hand, both Marathi (minus 45%) and Bengali (minus 33%) cinema suffered sharp contractions in receipts in 2019.
Driving the growth in revenue was an 8.9% increase in total footfalls across languages in 2019. The figure crossed the 100 crore mark last year to reach 103 crore, up from 2018’s 94.5 crore. Footfalls was one metric where Hollywood retained its fourth spot. With 9% contribution to domestic footfalls, it lagged behind Hindi (33%), Tamil (19%) and Telugu (18%).
