People who own theatres in Andhra Pradesh are not willing to develop or modernise it for the simple reason that there is no maintenance. In remote villages even when a film runs to a packed house, the crowd spits on the walls, the ACs don’t function, the rest rooms are not clean. There is no point in spending money when there is no civic culture. Also they are not making any money as the shelf life of films is also not that great. High income group viewers prefer to watch the film in the cities or wait till the DVD is out.
In Telangana it is a different scene. The single screen theatres like Mayuri, Usha Mayuri etc have no crowd altogether. By the time the word spreads that a film is good, it’s off theatres. At one point of time, the total number of theatres in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana was nearly 2,800; however, that number has fallen down to almost 1,500 now. Around 5000 mini-theatres all over Andhra Pradesh and Telangana will be coming up soon and will be operational in two years. The seating capacity will be from 75 to 200 in 3,000 sq ft. This will come up in gated communities and community halls, clubs and other locations. The entire ticket collection would be done online.
