Malayalam cinema gets a new home outside Kerala: Is this boom sustainable?

Chidambaram’s Manjummel Boys is a gripping watch. The story of a boys’ outing gone wrong, was released in February this year to gross (including taxes and trade share) a record Rs 168 crore at the box office. This week it was released on Disney + Hotstar.

Manjummel Boys joins a long list of Malayalam films having a fantastic run at the box office this year. There is the Fahadh Faasil starrer Aavesham about an eccentric gangster, Girish AD’s romantic-comedy Premalu, Blessy’s survival-drama Aadujeevitham -- The Goat Life, and Rahul Sadasivan’s taut thriller Bramayugam, with superstar Mammootty in the lead.

In the first four months of 2024, Malayalam cinema has grossed Rs 558 crore at the box office, according to data that Ormax Media has shared exclusively with Business Standard.

By the next week, it should comfortably cross the amount it raked in all of 2023 at the box office (Rs 572 crore).

Its share of the Indian box office has already risen to three times the average for the last many years.

“Malayalam cinema is booming because the films are working in both high-end multiplexes and outside of Kerala,” says Sreedhar Pillai, a writer and analyst who has tracked entertainment in the South for over three decades now.

“There are no good films in any language, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil,” says Mukesh Ratilal Mehta who has produced over 20 South Indian films.

Mainstream Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu releases have been few and far in-between this year.

“The audience in Kerala is rediscovering the joy of going back to the theatre,” says filmmaker Akhil Sathyan. He’s made the Faasil starrer, Paachuvum Albhuthavilakkum (2023), among others.

Sathyan is referring to the audience in Kerala.

But a big part of this boom is the rising audience for Malayalam films outside of Kerala.

“About 56 per cent of Manjummel Boys collection was outside of Kerala (largely Tamil Nadu) and this was for the Malayalam version,” points out Shailesh Kapoor, CEO, Ormax Media.

“In the last 6-8 months a new breed of non-Malayali audiences is discovering Malayalam cinema. Mumbai and Delhi are also turning out to be good markets especially since the sub-titling is top class,” says Pillai.

He reckons about 35 per cent of the revenues of the big hits come from outside of Kerala – this could be the rest of India or the overseas box office.

Malayalam has always been one of the best performers in India’s Rs 19,700 crore (total revenues) movie ecosystem. From a storytelling and cinematic perspective, it has delivered over the decades.

What has changed now?

The fall and the rise

Unni Warrier, senior special correspondent who covers cinema for Malayala Manorama, Kerala’s leading daily offers his take.

In 2010, Kerala had just over 1,000 screens, according to the Film Federation of India data. Like most other cinemas, this has been falling steadily.

This had been causing distress when streaming came in 2016 with loads of money. Warrier reckons that for 6-7 years ending in 2023, most producers were making films only for OTTs.

On average, the budget of say Rs 15 crore, films were making anywhere from Rs 17-27 crore from streaming rights alone. This meant profits without the effort of a theatrical release. The trend only accelerated during the pandemic.

In January 2023, streaming services, facing investor scrutiny, have decided to cut back on programming spend, across the world. Many decided to buy movies only after a theatrical release. This was true across languages.

“It was a crisis but it did a world of good for the Malayalam film business,” says Warrier.

The entire ecosystem pivoted back to the theatres, creatively and commercially. “Theatres in Kerala upgraded their seating, and sound system,” says Mehta.

“So many theatres have been renovated, and there is no need to go far away,” says Sathyan.

More screens got added too with PVR-Inox opening a 9-screen multiplex in Kochi last month. This is the third in the city, which takes its tally of screens in Kerala to 22. The state has over 500 screens now.

The timing couldn’t be better. According to Ormax, in 2023 more than 157 million Indians bought 943 million tickets to the cinema in what has been a record year.

But this is a different audience from the pre-pandemic one. It has tasted fare from across the world and from within India on streaming and in the theatres. All it seeks is a good film, a good story and the next big screen experience, irrespective of where it comes from, say analysts.

That explains why there were over two dozen domestic crossovers or pan-Indian films such as Animal, Salaar, and Jawan in 2023, up from a handful in 2019, according to Ormax.

Many have been hugely successful leading to an expansion of the audience for many Indian cinemas – Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, and Hindi. Malayalam simply joined the party in 2024.

Sathyan and Warrier point to another change – the expansion of the overseas market especially in the Gulf countries where many Malayalis work.

“Earlier films were sold to agents for release in markets outside India; now producers are releasing them directly,” says Warrier.

From say Rs 2-5 crore for a one-time sale of rights, the takings for successful films could be ten times as much. And if the movie is a theatrical success, the price that streaming and  television firms are willing to pay rises as well.

How sustainable is this boom? “It is sustainable because they (producers) are making films for the theatre,” says Warrier.

Mehta agrees. “It is not a flash in the pan; the habit (of going to the cinema) has restarted.” They are betting it will stay that way.