(Originally published on Apr 08, 2025, 01:40 PM IST)
Bollywood’s creative crisis: Why Hindi cinema is losing the shared experience economy battle
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Synopsis
Cinema attendance, particularly for Hindi films, is declining in India. Today’s audiences are more likely to wait for the films to stream online or choose other thrilling shared experiences instead.
A person experiences joy, fear, empathy, wonder, grief, and anxiety collectively with an auditorium full of strangers while watching a movie. When the 55-second silent film L'Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat was first screened in January 1896, viewers reportedly backed away in panic, convinced the train would burst through the screen — a testament to cinema’s power as a shared experience. Yet, in recent years, only a handful of Hindi