India is one of the most cinema crazy countries in the world, still, there is a large portion of audience that remains untouched by the magic of Indian films. To change this, filmmaker-actor Satish Kaushik has introduced his innovative idea of helping village audience to watch movies in trucks at a price as low as Rs 35.
The initiative named The Mobile Digital Movie Theatre (MDMT) has already made 10 theatre units are ready to launch on Indian roads in a couple of months. Interestingly, these theatres are named after famous Bollywood movies such as Mr. India, Baahubali, Shehanshah, and Don. Picture Time is the startup helping Satish in this cause.
Started in 2015, Picture Time introduced trucks as a medium to carry theaters to towns, villages and remote parts of the country. Each of these units includes a 22-foot screen with 5.1 Dolby surround sound. These are air-conditioned, fire-proof and weather-proof. As many as 150 to 200 people can sit together in one unit and pricing will be same for all seats. This will make Indian cinema affordable and accessible to a large number of people.
The tickets will be available at the official MDMT mobile application and also at the counter. Satish denied the rumors about contacting BookMyShow as the ticketing partner.
The idea for expanding Indian cinema came into Satish’s mind after he watched Bahubali 2 in a mobile theater. He got impressed by the picture and sound quality.
“Though the government is not funding the initiative, it is supporting us by ensuring that we can seamlessly procure permissions, including for the use of land and deployment of fire and police officials. In fact, we are giving preferred ad space to them so that they can connect with the citizens,” Satish said in a recent interview.
“Not just films, this portable theatre can be used for educational and government purposes also, when leaders and speakers want their speeches to reach the interior parts (of the country). The person could be in Delhi, but people can watch it in Mumbai at the portable theatre,” he added.
The entire project is the brainchild of entrepreneur Sushil Chaudhary, who is the founder of Picture Time. His vision is to bring the experience of cinema to maximum number of audience in India and that can only happen if prices are low. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has supported this initiative by inaugurating the mobile theatre.
It will be interesting to see how people in rural India respond to this idea. What are your thoughts about this? Do let us know in the comments section.
