Mohan Umrotkar, Ceo, Carnival Cinemas On The Current Situation Of Total Lockdown

Jyothi Venkatesh

Gaurav Gupta, AGM, Media Alliance & PR, Carnival Group of Cinemas, India has sent bollyy.com this media release from Mohan Umrotkar, CEO, Carnival Cinemas on account of the advent of corona Virus and the current situation of total lockdown. “Definitely COVID 19 has affected the business immensely. March has been impacted badly as compared to last year so does the last quarter. As per the government’s notification, all the cinemas are not functional till 31^st March in most of the states and we are expecting that this situation will be under control soon and we will be up and running from 1^st April onwards with utmost important feature at Carnival – hygiene and public safety.

This quarter is completely washed out and shall be down at least 40-50 percent as compared to last year. One, because the movie line up was weak and then the Covid-19 impact in March. It is unfortunate that the business is affected so much, but human life is of most importance. Necessary precautions are a must in these times of crisis. We may not get the desired revenue in this quarter but it will come in the subsequent months. As a business model, we have a fixed overhead so that’s a loss if the cinemas go vacant for a longer period of time. The film release calendar has been pushed ahead but after everything gets back to normalcy and film schedule is in place again, we are expecting that 1^st quarter on 2020-21 should yield atleast 5-8 percent more revenue than last year same quarter as the current line-up of the films looks very promising, including 83, Raadhe, Laxxmi Bomb, Bond movie and many more. If this situation remains same in April, the first quarter will also face some heat in that case. Public will be back in cinemas, once the content is available for them.

Momentum is now building to impose physical distancing once again. But it’s critical to be smart about it. We strongly support these measures, which will save lives. This is the first week of complete lockdown and we are not getting many queries from the patrons as the first priority is staying safe. Unfortunately, we are in this for a long haul. We need to prepare to pull together, help one another and preserve social cohesion while we use physical distancing to combat the virus.