of the 864seater minar says smartphone movieviewing have drilled the last nail on the coffin of theatres his cinema was established in 1948 and shut in 2016 after an eightmonth hiatus it reopened in may last year on august 29 the noon and evening show of drishtantor had 6 and 15 viewers respectively the matinee and night shows of genius had 29 and 5 viewers even multiplexes are feeling the heat a hawker in front of my theatre now has a bigscreen smartphone and a pair of earphones seventy rupees the price of a ticket gets him a monthlong entertainment package on his mobile only superb movies and 3d experiences can attract cinegoers paul saysits the same sad story at bhowanipores indira theatre established in 1947 the 824seater often gets only 1012 viewers for a show according to owner rajendra bagadia our sales surge only on weekends besides piracy films are being screened on television within fourfive weeks of their theatrical releaseentertainment on the palmaccording to filmmaker q who has embraced digital release for his films the idea of a collective cinemaviewing experience has definitely been hampered by the emergence of the phone culture people are now totally and completely on their ownamitabh chakrabortys 2014 film cosmic sex still makes money from online streaming platforms but i didnt make any money from theatrical release the director saysaccording to data shared by amazon prime video that has been sourced from the ernst young report on reimagining indias monitoring and evaluation sector online viewing increased by 64 over 2016 with 250 million viewers consuming online videos in 2017 around 40 of total mobile traffic came from consumption of video services in 2015 and this is expected to reach 72 by 2020indians are amongst the top mobile downloaders in the world for netflix contentactor prosenjit chatterjee insists that producers have now become contentproviders my son who stays in a hostel has watched 80 of the movies i mention to him i need to accept this change in viewing pattern he says some films with lukewarm boxoffice response have got good response digitally chatterjees khwato which didnt do well at the box office got one of the highest clicks on youtube hoichoi and the bengali slate of amazonon being asked whether this was a threat to multiplexes he says it is a threat to everything including the television industryhowever multiplex authorities arent yet ready to acknowledge the impact of overthetop ott content that delivers audio video and other multimedia content over the internet the target audience for an ott platform and us are very different watching a film in a cinema is like a social gathering in india it is a family outing and that will never go out of fashion a hardcore movie fanatic will always want the largescreen experience says rajeev patni vicepresident operations inox leisure ltd but doesnt the youth hooked to ott overlap with the multiplex clientele youth are drawn to good content on any medium we havent observed