Box-office hits draw shoppers back to malls in December

Pushpa 2: The Rule starring Allu Arjun, one of the all-time top grossers, opened in cinemas in December. Kartik Aaryan-starrer Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 and Mufasa: The Lion King have also drawn crowds.

Strong box-office releases, along with the festival season demand up to Diwali, drove a high single-digit growth in sales for retailers in the three months ending December, according to mall owners.

“In this quarter we have actually come back very strongly,” said Pratik Dantara, head, investor relations and strategy, Nexus Select Trust, the operator of 17 shopping centers across several cities with tenants including H&M, Zara and Sephora. Footfalls doubled after falling in the half year ended September, he said

“Demand was weak in the first nine months of the (calendar) year. But, starting Diwali, releases like Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3, Singham Again, Mufasa: The Lion King, and now Pushpa 2, we’ve got the footfalls back,” Dantara said. “This has obviously helped consumption. Cinema has done reasonably well among other categories in the mall.”

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Multiplexes boost footfall at shopping centres, particularly on weekends, spurring consumption of everything from fast food and apparel to high-value jewellery. Higher inflation and a decline in government spending during the general election, however, cooled demand for the nation’s retail market pegged at $820 billion in 2023 by the Boston Consulting Group. That partly reflected in India’s GDP growing at its slowest pace in seven quarters at 5.4% in the three months through September.

The festival season, however, was expected to aid a revival as retailers usually offer discounts and attractive schemes to lure shoppers back.

“Till November we saw high single-digit sales. December also followed that trend, but we will have to wait for the month to end since we have some heavy footfall days ahead (including Christmas and the weekend before New Years),” Dantara said. “In the first half of the year, footfalls were down 2%; we are now in the positive zone, up 2-3%.”

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Fewer films came to screens after the pandemic with shoots remaining restricted. Video streaming platforms emerged as an alternative, prompting consumers to ditch the theaters. While the post-Covid period has seen hits such as Pathaan, Jawan, Gadar 2, Animal and others, the first few months of 2024 were particularly dull for theatres, with no big Hindi language releases. 

While the December quarter was packed with big-ticket releases, the flow of new movies has been more consistent compared with earlier in the year when several titles were deferred because of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and Lok Sabha elections.

While the Hindi version of Pushpa 2 has crossed the ₹700 crore mark, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 has raked in ₹278.42 crore and Singham Again at ₹268.35 crore, besides smaller successes like The Sabarmati Report ( ₹30.90 crore).

“There has been some consistency in footfalls over the past one-and-a-half to two months overall, with Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 and Singham Again during Diwali, followed by Pushpa 2, of course; and now Mufasa that has also opened decently,” Rahul Puri, managing director, Mukta Arts and Mukta A2 Cinemas said. The sentiment is “fairly positive” as far as mall walk-ins go, especially in bigger cities, he said.

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Still, consumers in smaller tier 2 and 3 cities still face “significant financial stress” and spending on entertainment isn’t a priority, Puri said. “The mall footfalls have dropped and that in turn, impacts cinemas too.”

Shopping centres have been trying to shake off some of the loss in cinema traffic by adding more experience zones for kids, boosting live entertainment shows, and increasing food and beverage offerings.

Mall owners in metro cities, however, expect the third-quarter momentum to continue in the new year.

“The whole year has been weak, but…mall occupancy has become better in December with some of these film releases,” said Pushpa Bector, senior executive director and business head, DLF Retail, which operates a clutch of shopping centres in north India.

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The December quarter seems to be incrementally better than the last two, with DLF seeing “some green shoots starting 15th November”, she said. “End-of-season sales have also started. People are back in stores as well as cinemas.”

“Next year,” Bector said, “we do expect good content coming in. That should work in our favour.”