When marketing noise replaces footfalls and perception trumps participation, Indian cinema risks hollowing itself out. The growing gap between box-office declarations and empty theatres exposes a system addicted to optics over audiences. Vinta Nanda goes around to find out…

From corporate block bookings to inflated opening-day numbers, Indian cinema is grappling with a credibility crisis. As trade journalists and exhibitors question “house full” claims amid empty theatres, the industry must confront how manufactured success is reshaping box-office narratives and audience trust.

This is dystopian — not because the films are bad, but because the business of looking successful has quietly replaced the work of being watched.

Walk up to a multiplex on a Friday and you might see a glowing HOUSEFULL board and a thunderous social-media chorus declaring the film a blockbuster. Walk into the hall, though, and you might find a dozen people scattered across rows of empty seats. That gap between noise and reality isn’t a glitch. It’s a strategy.

As journalist Vickey Lalwani put it after witnessing the machinery at work in a podcast: “I was sitting at a producer’s office. It was day two of his film’s release, and they were already preparing a creative that the film has made Rs 24 crore on day two. The second day had just begun. How could they know how much the film will make?… So everything is scripted, everything is planned.”

Let’s be blunt. There are three moving parts to this illusion: bulk or corporate bookings, engineered publicity, and a market that now values headlines over honesty.  

The Business of Buying ‘Housefull’

Producers, brands and even fan networks buy large blocks of tickets — sometimes for genuine distribution to employees or partners, sometimes simply to salt the books. Tickets bought are counted as tickets sold, even if no one actually turns up. The theatre technically isn’t lying. The system records transactions, not attendance.

Trade portals have documented how corporate and self-buying have ballooned in recent years, noting cases where tickets worth crores were purchased and often never redeemed. The result: housefull boards, but no audience. For many producers, this spend is treated as a marketing line-item — an investment in perception rather than participation.

PR Over Public Response

If your film is seen as a hit on Friday, everything that follows becomes easier. You get better screen allocations, stronger placement in multiplex chains, more favourable media coverage and, crucially, higher valuations for satellite and OTT rights. In this ecosystem, the opening-weekend narrative matters more than sustained footfalls.

Trade analyst Taran Adarsh has repeatedly pointed out that this practice isn’t new. Earlier, it was called “feeding” — buying tickets to create momentum. What’s changed is scale. In the social-media era, impressions matter as much as admissions, and hype travels faster than truth. 

Producers today chase revenue from multiple streams, not just theatrical tickets. Digital platforms often pay premiums to films that cross certain box-office thresholds. If a film can be projected as a ₹100-crore hit by day three, it enters negotiations from a position of strength — regardless of how many people actually watched it.

As trade investigations have shown, a producer can treat bulk ticket purchases as marketing expenses and still recover part of that money through downstream deals. The logic becomes perverse but effective: spend to look successful, then monetise the appearance of success.  

When Trade Voices Push Back

This is why films like Game Changer, Sky Force and Chhaava have entered public debate. Journalists and trade analysts have questioned their reported numbers, pointing to discrepancies between collections and visible footfalls.

Veteran trade observer Komal Nahta has openly called out what he believes are inflated box-office figures, arguing that reported collections often far exceed the actual audience turnout he observes on the ground.

And then there’s Dhurandhar. It generated massive box-office chatter and a social-media storm, but exhibitors and independent observers told a different story. Veteran exhibitor Manoj Desai reportedly told Lalwani that he walked into an auditorium declared “house-full” online and found it largely empty — a discrepancy he attributed to aggressive marketing and bulk bookings rather than organic demand.  

Not Every Loud Film Is Lying

It’s important to be fair. Not every film with heavy marketing is gaming the system. The hype around some titles — Saiyara, for instance — did translate into real audiences, repeat viewings and word-of-mouth momentum. Some films genuinely capture the public mood.

But the problem is structural. Engineered openings blur the line between celebration and fabrication. The industry ends up debating optics rather than art, numbers rather than narratives, perception rather than participation. 

Why does this matter? Because trust is the currency of culture. People stop believing trade figures, discount reviews and disengage emotionally. Cinema stops being a shared public experience and starts feeling like a PR exercise staged for audiences, not with them.

What Can Change the Script

Clearer reporting on actual attendance, separation of bulk bookings from organic sales, and honesty from trade bodies would help restore credibility. Journalists and exhibitors have begun asking uncomfortable questions — and the healthiest response from the industry would be facts, not fury.

The dystopia is not inevitable. It’s a choice. 

Every time the industry slaps on a “hit” sticker instead of nurturing audiences, it chooses optics over longevity. If cinema wants to remain a communal ritual rather than a marketing spectacle, the conversation must shift — from who shouts loudest on day one to who builds a real crowd by week two.

That shift, more than any box-office number, will decide cinema’s future.