Data for the first edition of Sizing The Cinema, our research report to size India's theatre-going universe (defined as those who watched at least one movie in a theatre in the last 12 months), was collected in Jan-Mar 2020, coincidentally just before the onset of the pandemic (details here). After more than two years of disruption, theatrical business found its footing again and saw positive growth in 2023 (see our annual box office report). In Jan 2024, we conducted the third round of the Sizing The Cinema research, among 8,500 Indian audiences across urban and rural India.

According to the latest report, titled Sizing The Cinema: 2024, India now has 157.4 Million or 15.7 Crore theatre-goers i.e., those who watched at least one film in a theatre in 2023. This not only marks a 29% increase compared to the previous year (12.2 Crore) but also surpasses the pre-pandemic level (14.6 Crore) by 8%. However, even with this growth, India's theatre-going universe is only 11.1% of the country's population.

Hindi-language cinema has seen the most significant growth, with its audience rising to 92.2 Million (9.2 Crore), a 58% increase over 2022. Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada films have witnessed a minor drop in audience shares, while Malayalam cinema witnessed a 19% increase in audience. The table below summarises these language-level changes in India's theatrical universe from 2022 to 2023.

The 15.7 Crore audience contributed to the 94.3 Crore footfalls at the domestic box office in 2023, which comes to an average of 6.0 films watched by a typical theatre-goer in India, across all languages put together. However, there is significant variation in the number of average films watched by a typical theatre-goer, by languages, as captured in the table below: 

*Footfalls based on The Ormax Box Office Report: 2023 (download here)

The average number of films watched in 2023 by a typical theatre-goer is significantly higher among the South Indian languages (except Kannada) vis-a-vis Hindi.

The full version of Sizing The Cinema: 2024 report is available by paid subscription. The report profiles India's theatre-going audience by gender, age, pop strata, markets, film territories, and languages. You can email us at [email protected] for details related to the report and its subscription.