With Covid going down, 75% rise in cinemagoers in last 2 months, poll finds

In December 2021, 14% of respondents had plans to visit a cinema hall once in the next two months which rose to 41% in March 2022 – a three-fold rise, says LocalCircles survey.

Representational image | Visitors being thermally scanned at a cinema hall in Prayagraj | ANI Photo

MONAMI GOGOI, The Print, 18 March, 2022, New Delhi: With Covid cases falling, cinema halls and multiplexes have witnessed a steady rise in footfalls, a survey has revealed.

Last December, Noida-based online platform LocalCircles found that 14% of those surveyed had visited a cinema hall once or more. This has now risen to 25% in March 2022, marking a nearly 75% increase in the last two months.

Covid cases in India hovered over 3,50,000 till mid-January but daily infections have now dropped to as low as 3,000 cases.

Similarly, a comparison between two polls surveying the number of people planning to visit a cinema hall or multiplex in the next two months witnessed a 200% rise. In December 2021, 14% of respondents had plans to visit a cinema hall once in the next two months which rose to 41% in March 2022 – a three-fold rise.

Forty-one percent of 9,385 respondents said they would visit a cinema hall or multiplex to watch a movie in the next 60 days while 35% said they had no such plans.

This comes in contract to only 25% of 10,011 people (around 2,500 people) who watched a movie in theatres in the last two months. Adding to that figure, nearly 49% of respondents skipped watching a movie outside their homes.

The poll received over 19,000 responses from people in 311 districts of India. 62% of respondents were men while 38% surveyed were women.