Film exhibitor Akshaye Rathi explains the possible theories...
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday evening announced that Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes stand abolished from Wednesday, November 9. A fresh set of Rs 500 notes along with new Rs 2000 currency notes will be released in the market soon.
Actor Riteish Deshmukh took to Twitter to discuss an issue more relevant to Bollywood in today's times. He asked his fans an important question - Will the #NoteBan affect new releases at the box office for the next few weeks?
We too feel that it's something that's on most producer and director's mind right now. With films like Rock On 2, Force 2, Dear Zindagi, Kahaani 2 and Befikre coming up in the following weeks, will Bollywood lose out on more money at the box office?
Film exhibitor Akshaye Rathi admits that it's something that will definitely have an initial effect on Bollywood films in the next few weeks. "The degree of impact will be more visible in tier 2 and tier 3 towns where people are not completely aware of using plastic money or online banking. Places like Mumbai, Bangalore or Delhi is where people go to PayTM or a Book My Show to get their tickets. But there's still a lot of people who are old school, who go to the bank in the beginning of the month, withdraw money and have a monthly budget. They spend that in cash. In those kind of places, the impact will be significantly bigger."
Akshaye explains that around 40 percent of the money comes from online banking today. "It all depends city to city. In metro cities like Mumbai, around 40% of tickets are sold online. But you move to a tier 2 city like Lucknow and the percentage drops to around 30%. You move to some other small town and it's not even that much."
But Akshaye also adds that although 'there will be a degree of inconvenience caused to moviegoers now, it's going to benefit industry in the long term'. How? "If you look at the future, it's better because the production sectors will be benefited. Producers are always harrowed - people come and disrupt shoot and there needs to be bribes. But all that leakage will stop so overall, the industry is welcoming this new change. The entire industry has applauded the measure."
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 "Rock On 2, Dear Zindagi")
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