Aamir Khan recently made headlines by calling for a surge in Indian cinema screens, highlighting the impressive performance of ‘Dhurandhar’ and contrasting India’s 9,000 screens with China’s impressive 100,000. Despite this, film distributor Akkshay Rathie voiced concerns, asserting that merely increasing the number of screens wouldn’t ensure success.

Aamir Khan recently stated that the country needs more theaters, as he talked about the massive success of Ranveer Singh’s ‘Dhurandhar’. He suggested that increasing the number of screens in India would generate more profits for the production houses. However, film distributor Akkshay Rathie disagrees with the actor’s remarks. He responded with a long note on his social media. Let’s take a look at it.

Film distributor responds to Aamir Khan’s comment about India needing more theaters

Film distributor and exhibitor Akkshay Rathie took to his X account to respond to Aamir Khan’s statement about fewer screens in India as compared to China. He wrote, “With due respect, which is the last film you made, which warranted a release in each of the 9000+ screens in India? Or even in the 4500-odd screens in the Hindi-speaking markets? Happy Patel, Laapata Ladies, Sitaare Zameen Par, etc., have had very limited metro-focused releases & been completely irrelevant for the long tail of the existent exhibition sector.“

Rathie’s post didn’t end there, as he added, “Trust me when I say this, sir—Indian business entities are enterprising enough to build the infrastructure you’re talking about in record time, but the fuel for it is content that finds appeal with the grassroots of our markets, being made and released with some consistency.”Responding to Aamir Khan’s ‘Dhurandhar’ example, Akkshay Rathie further shared, “You spoke about ‘Dhurandhar’ and its potential business if it had released in a hypothetical 15000 screens. How many films in an year do the kind of numbers that Dhurandhar did? Or have as wide a geographical impact in terms of footfalls in cities, towns, and villages that have a cinema hall today? Can cinemas, which require crores of rupees in capex to be built and have high operating costs, be made and maintained for 3-4 such films in an year which create significant impact on the PandL?”Rathie went on to call Aamir Khan’s statement “cute theoretical jargon,” considering the content that is being released. He added, “As an exhibitor, I assure you, my fraternity will leave no stone unturned in building more screens if content creators like you can start making films that find appeal beyond urban India, which is already super saturated with screens. I promise, I respect you from the bottom of my heart for the amazing films you’ve made back in the day, many of which continue to be my all-time favorites.“Rathie concluded, saying, “However, this statement needed to be called out because it has been stated and repeated illogically over the years. Yes, we need thousands of more screens, but before that, we need films that can enable them to be built! Hope to see you play your part in it. We’ll definitely do our bit. Best wishes for Ek Din, Lahore 1947, and whatever you choose to make next.”

What did Aamir Khan say about screens?

In an interview with Variety India, Aamir Khan shared that India is a massive country and has different cultures and languages. Hence, according to the actor, it needs a greater number of screens.He said, “If you want to compete with China, for example, they have, I think, one lakh screens. We are at 9,000 screens. What is the comparison? We are one-tenth their size in outlets.”Citing the example of Ranveer Singh’s film, he said, “Let’s take the example of ‘Dhurandhar’, which has done around Rs 1,000 crore. Now, imagine if it had been released not in 5,000 screens but in 15,000 screens. Massive! So, this is what I’m trying to say.”He expressed that change will happen when the number of screens increases. He shared the fact that there are a lot of districts in India that don’t have a single-screen theater.