The silver screen's silver lining

Multilingual films, more screens and better stories are getting more people into the theatres after years

It is just a sliver of good news. But it is worth hanging on to. Indians bought 1.03 billion movie tickets in 2019. That is up 9 per cent over 2018 when they bought 945 million tickets, says a recently-released Ormax Media Box Office Re­port for 2019. The rise is not huge but it is good news for three reasons.

One, because it is arguably the only one so far in what has been a miserable year for In­dia’s Rs 1,67,400-crore media and entertainment industry. A combination of factors — the economic slowdown, Te­le­com Regulatory Authority of India’s me­ddling in television