The projector at Shanti 70MM in Hyderabad’s Narayanguda has been silent for six years, but cinema has not entirely left the building. This Ganesh Chaturthi, rows of idols stood where moviegoers once queued for tickets, while the theatre’s familiar facade looked down on a space that had once seen giant cut-outs, packed houses and whistles for star entrances.
Opened in 1969, Shanti became one of Hyderabad’s best-known single screens. N.T. Rama Rao’s Daana Veera Soora Karna ran there for 250 days in 1977. But after COVID-19 shut cinemas in 2020, Shanti never reopened. The management decided to close it permanently and use the premises as a godown.
Its fate captures a larger shift in Hyderabad’s cinema culture. The number of single screens has dwindled, multiplexes have changed the experience and OTT has brought films home, but the appetite for the big screen remains. The Paradise starring Nani recently opened to packed houses, with giant cut-outs positioned outside single screens across the city. The buildings and the business of cinema may be changing, but the craze for going to the movies has proved harder to kill. During the Ganesh immersion rush, people even manoeuvred through trucks carrying idols around Tank Bund to reach Prasads theatre for the 8 a.m. show.
Just outside Shanti, 44-year-old Suresh runs a tea and cigarette kiosk. His first film there was Ikkada Abbai Akkada Ammayi in 1996. “We could watch the movie and have snacks and wrap up our evening for ₹50. The ticket cost ₹10 and a soft drink less than ₹10 back then,” he recalls.
Today, he has stopped going to theatres. “Now you cannot think of spending anything less than ₹2,000 for a movie at a multiplex, if you go with family. I have stopped going to the theatres altogether. I rely on OTT and cable TV,” he says.
He also remembers the informal circuit around the old theatres: Shanti’s 2.45 p.m. booking window was a second chance for those who missed the 1.45 p.m. booking at Sandhya at RTC Crossroads. “Take a bus from there and you land here,” he says.
There was a time when watching a film meant planning an outing around a place. Viewers chose a theatre, reached there, joined a queue and hoped tickets were available. The coloured paper ticket, posters outside, interval snacks, whistles and applause were all part of the experience.
Writer and comedian Deepak Karamungikar, who has watched films since he was four, recalls watching Telugu films with his uncle and even bunking college to watch as many as 100 films in each of his two years of Intermediate. A balcony ticket cost ₹6, or ₹8 at most, at that time.
The experience had its own rituals: dress-circle and front-row seats, soft drinks carried through the auditorium, unbranded potato chips and ushers guiding viewers to their seats with torchlight.
Through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, Hyderabad’s cinema map was dotted with landmarks — Sangeet, Anand, Tivoli, Natraj, Ajanta, Raghavendra, Odeon, Sudarshan, Sandhya, Vimal and Gokul. Some became so embedded in the city that their names outlived the theatres. Nearly two decades after Sangeet shut, the crossroads is still known as Sangeet Junction.
But what made these theatres part of the city was also the people who filled them. Inside a dark auditorium, a businessman could sit beside a schoolteacher, a government employee could laugh alongside a factory worker, and a college student could whistle at a hero’s entrance with somebody twice his age. For two or three hours, everyone was simply an audience.
That shared experience could alter a film. A comedy became funnier in a packed hall, a hero’s entrance could bring hundreds to their feet and a song could trigger applause before it had properly begun. The film was the same, but every audience could make it feel different.
People at Sandhya Theatre in RTC Cross Roads, during screenings of Telugu film 'Lenin', in July this year. | Photo Credit: SIDDHANT THAKUR
Brand strategist Ashish Chowdhury remembers Sangeet and Anand, along with Skyline in Himayatnagar and Sensation in Lakdikapul, as prominent theatres of the early 1990s. Maheshwari Parameshwari had an added attraction: an escalator. When he watched Refugee there in 2000, he recalls going up and down it “at least 10 times”.
Years later, while watching Avengers in Bengaluru in 2012, Chowdhury found former India cricketer Rahul Dravid sitting beside him. It was a chance encounter that neatly captured the cinema hall’s ability to put strangers from different lives in the same row.
Multiplexes changed not just the number of screens but the architecture of movie-going itself. Karamungikar remembers visiting Prasads when it opened in 2003 and being struck by an 8.45 a.m. show, unusual in a city used to 11 a.m., 2 p.m., 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. screenings.
More importantly, the cinema had become part of a larger outing. Multiplexes offered multiple films and timings under one roof, along with better seating, air-conditioning, sound, projection, parking and food. “We were unaware of the concept of a place where we can do much more than just watch a movie,” Karamungikar says, describing Prasads as a cornerstone in the shift in Hyderabad’s movie culture.
Chowdhury also points to the greater accessibility multiplexes offered differently-abled viewers. “I think, for once, a differently abled person could visit a theatre and experience the large screen,” he adds.
Technology has continued to reshape the movie-going experience, with Hyderabad now home to large-format screens, LED projection and Dolby-equipped auditoriums.
But the new experience also changed the economics. Karamungikar cites ticket and food costs among the reasons audiences moved towards OTT and, in some cases, piracy.
For theatre owners, the calculation is more fundamental: how much can a property earn by showing films, and how much could it earn doing something else?
Across Hyderabad, former cinemas illustrate the answer. Usha Mayuri at RTC Crossroads was replaced by a petrol pump while Galaxy Theatre at Tolichowki gave way to a commercial estate. Krishna Talkies in the Old City was reported to have become a mall while Shama Talkies at Jahanuma shut after nearly four decades, with its owner saying the family planned a function hall in its place.
M. Vijayender Reddy, president of the Telangana Telugu Exhibitors Association and joint secretary of the Telugu Film Chamber, has watched the business change for nearly five decades. He opened Venkateshwara theatre in 1976 and recalls how revenue arrangements, film hiring, taxation and ticketing systems evolved.
“It was a hit-and-miss risk,” he says of the earlier hire system, in which exhibitors took films at their own risk.
The larger change is visible in the numbers. “There were around 3,600 single-screen theatres in the two Telugu States at their peak, the highest in India. Now there are around 1,600,” he says. By his estimate, about 2,000 have either shut or their properties have been taken over for other businesses.
For exhibitors, the equation ultimately remains simple: “The number of tickets sold decides the fate,” Reddy says. As footfall declines, the land beneath a theatre can make better business sense than the screen inside it.
As theatres found new uses, films found a new home.
OTT platforms were already growing before 2020, but the COVID-19 lockdown pushed streaming into the centre of household entertainment. There was no need to cross the city, find parking or arrange an evening around a showtime. A film could be paused for dinner, resumed the next morning or abandoned halfway.
Movie buffs at the ticket counter of Sandhya Theatre in RTC Crossroads, for Telugu release Lenin. | Photo Credit: SIDDHANT THAKUR
The economics strengthened the appeal. A household can spend roughly ₹650 to ₹1,500 on subscriptions for a month and access a vast catalogue, while a family outing for a major film can cross ₹2,000 after tickets, transport and food. The choice is no longer between one movie ticket and one streaming subscription, but between one evening of entertainment and a month of it.
Karamungikar says OTT has also opened opportunities for creators, and his own viewing has shifted towards television shows. Yet he remains emphatic: “Movies belong in a theatre.” For him, OTT is better suited for rewatches or films missed in theatres. The theatre has moved from being the default destination for a film to a place that must offer a reason to leave home.
Spectacle remains one reason. Big action films, visual productions, major star releases and films built around sound and scale can still turn a screening into an event. First-day shows still draw fans, and a horror film can be more frightening when an entire room jumps together. For other films, “I will wait for the OTT release” has become routine. Audiences have not necessarily abandoned cinema; they have become more selective about which films deserve the trip.
Yet the theatre offers something streaming cannot easily reproduce: collective attention. At home, a film competes with messages, chores and notifications. In a dark auditorium, two or three hours belong to one story.
Chowdhury sees another version of collective viewing emerging in smaller community spaces, where groups gather for older, obscure or non-mainstream films. He recalls watching Whiplash (2014) with about 20 people at one such screening.
Perhaps that is the paradox of Hyderabad’s changing relationship with cinema. The city has never had more ways to watch a film, even as some of the buildings that once existed solely for hundreds of people to watch one together have disappeared or found entirely different lives. But the desire to watch together has not vanished. It has simply moved: from the neighbourhood single screen to the multiplex, from the multiplex to the living room, and now, in some cases, into smaller rooms where people still choose to watch together.
