Daybreak - Did your ticket to The Odyssey cost a bomb? Blame Hollywood's China problem

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day just broke India's box office records back to back — and PVR Inox's stock jumped almost 20% in the process. It looks like proof that Indian audiences are finally back in theatres. But that's not all.The real story runs through just 34 IMAX screens, a decade-old trade deal that quietly expired, and a geopolitical rift thousands of miles away that has nothing to do with India at all. Today on Daybreak, we look at how a nationwide screen shortage — something that should have hurt business — became PVR Inox's most profitable weapon, why Hollywood needs India more than ever, and why your next movie ticket could go either way depending on where you live.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

It probably hasn't missed your notice just how much people have been paying to watch The Odyssey in IMAX. When I was looking for tickets, the cheapest IMAX seats in Bangal were selling at $1,100 for almost as long as a month. And I mean the really crappy ones right at the front. The one where you have to like crane your head back to look at the screen. The opening week even saw prices crossing $2,000 for the premium seats and these were consistently sold out. So it came as no surprise when last week the epic action saga became the most successful IMAX movie in India ever. It made more than 60 crore rupees and just threw 34 IMAX screens in 17 days. This, by the way, despite the fact that the internet was flooded with jokes about how India's IMAX screens were not the true 70mm imax format.

Some even called Indian IMAX theaters LIMax and others couldn't help but find the irony in how The Odyssey is the first movie where people who couldn't pay high prices would literally see less because of how the movie is cropped on regular screens. And then, less than a week later, came Spider-Man Brand New Day, the latest in the franchise starring Tom Holland,

which became the highest-grossing Hollywood movie in India after it pulled in 500 plus crore rupees of gross earnings in just 11 days. The sky-high success of both movies did not escape the market's attention. PVR Inox's stocks went up by almost 20% in July. The rally began post the release of The Odyssey, with the line continuing to tick up after the release of Spider-Man. For PVR especially, this was just the cherry on top of what was already looking like the start of a good year.

It had just posted its first quarterly profit in years in 2026. And it had more tent pole blockbuster scheduled for the rest of the year, like Dune 3, Toxic and Avengers Doomsday. Now, on paper, it does look like a recovery for PVR and every other theatre out there after a slow last couple of years. In fact, PVR had seen a net loss of nearly 280 crore rupees in FY25. But it looks like audiences are going back to the theatres and are more engaged than ever. PVR's net profit of 56.5 crore rupees in the quarter that ended in June 26 was owed to an increase in ticket sales, which shows that more people were ready to pay high prices and maybe even watch a movie more than once. But there is more to the reasons behind the success of both of these blockbusters.

Like Hollywood's increased focus on India as a market after having limited access to one of the biggest cinema markets in the world. And surprisingly enough, also the thing that should have been a problem. The screen shortage in India. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host, Treater Wurgis, and every day of the week, my co-host, Nickas Shram and I will bring you one new story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Wednesday, the 12th of August. The Odyssey's promotional tour in India is probably one of the most viral ones in the country. The movie premiered in Mumbai at PVR icon, which is often called one of India's most premium cinema experiences.

And just a few hours before the premiere, Nolan, Matt Damon, who plays Odysseus in the saga, and Tom Holland, who plays his son in the movie, made what seemed like a random stop at Olympia Coffee House in Gulaba. The obvious reference to the Greek Mount Olympus aside, the video of the moment went viral because of how culturally resonant it was. Three of Hollywood's most recognizable names were having Chai and Bunmaska in the middle of Mumbai and of course this prompted several comments asking if the video was AI. The video of the moment which was posted by Universal Pictures, the film production company and distributor and all the other digital content from the tool

generated more than 50 million views on social media. Following this premiere, Nolan even wore an Ajrak Thai, Ajak being a Desi Brockman style, on the red carpet for the movie's premiere in New York. The India tour was marketed as Nolan's first ever official premiere in the country and Mumbai was put right alongside locations like New York, London and Paris as a tour stop. But the increased attention and the bus that generated in India, soon ran into a problem. The demand for the movie was massive

and the FOMO was real. Everyone wanted to watch the movie. But the thing is, India's screen density remains among the lowest. Barely seven screens per million of the population. And that is from a Ficky EY report for FY26. That number, by the way, is in a country with the population of 1.5 billion.

To put that into perspective, the US has 109 screens per million people and France 95. In total, India has only 10,000 to 12,000 screens and only 34 IMAX screens and not one of them in the true IMAX format. Basically, that means that the quality of the movies filmed in 70mm iMacs is sharper than 4K HD and taller than most movies. For a movie with a campaign that from its filming days has partly rested on it being the first commercial length movie shot entirely on 70mm iMac's film, this was a bit of a problem. But of course, the studio and distributors found their ways to work around it by making sure that the same 34 screens could churn as much money as possible.

One way this was done by broadening the demand pool itself. The Odyssey reached more audiences in India than a Nolan movie ever had before. For example, Oppenheimer, which was the most successful IMAX movie in India before The Odyssey, had been released only in English and Hindi. It had missed out on making the most of what the Minch described in a piece as the film crazy southern states. So, it made sense that Nolan's adaptation of Homer's epic was released with Tamil and Telugu dubbing as well. Even Spider-Man brand new day, the other standout of the season, released in six languages. English, Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu.

And that's not it. You see, to make the most of the limited screens, IMAX and screen operating brands like PVR INOX engineered campaigns specifically to bring people back to the same screens. PVR, by the way, operates the largest number of IMAX screens in India, about 21 out of the 34. Now, all of this boils down to really simple economics. You see, even as the demand kept increasing

through the promotions and a broadening demand pool, the supplies stayed exactly the same. And that is what helped cinemas keep the prices high and what resulted in you probably paying three times what a regular crappy IMAX ticket would cost. In fact, at one point, prices in Mumbai and Delhi were as high as $3,000 and $2,500. No wonder the movie broke records as fast as it did.

Now, here are some ways in which cinemas figured out that they could squeeze the most out of viewers by having them watch the same movie again and again. A piece from Deccan Chronicle described how the brand's campaign introduced merchandise like a set of four character pins in week one, encouraging people, to complete the set by visiting more than once. Week 2 saw the introduction of a framed strip of the original 70-millimeter IMAX film as a collectible and in week 3 and week 4, cinemas started selling exclusive artwork posters.

All of the promotions were aimed at framing The Odyssey as a once-in-a-generation cinematic event, best experienced in IMAX. Kamal Gyan Chandani, PBR Inox's chief strategy officer, credited the company's role in the movie's success, from hosting the premiere event to the campaigns that sustained demand during its entire run. He claimed that the campaign-made moviegoers treat the film as an event that was worth coming back to and to be shared with family and friends. The loyalty engineering certainly shows up in the numbers for companies like PVR as well.

Its profitable quarter, for example, was driven by an almost 16% year-on-year increase in ticket sales to more than $8 billion and a nearly 17% rise in food and beverage sales to more than $5 billion. Based on these statistics, the numbers for next quarter are likely going to see a similar trend, considering the records that two major movies have already broken and a blockbuster slate that's lined up for the rest of the year.

But knowing the kind of screen distribution in India, what convinced the studio to spend the kind of time and money it did on promoting it in the country. More on this in the next segment. You see, Hollywood has steadily been losing out on access to China as a market. China is one of the biggest movie markets in the world. It has over 90,000 screens and more than 700 IMAX screens. The country's screen density sits at about 64 screens per million people.

That scale is barely comparable to India's. Now, let me explain what exactly is going on between Hollywood and the Chinese market. In 2017, a deal between US and China called the US-China Film Agreement expired and was never renewed. The deal used to guarantee the release of 34 American films in China every year. By 2021, the number of US films imported by China dropped to 21. And Hollywood soon started losing profits in the market. Its share of China's annual box office fell from 36% in 2018 to just 14% in 2024. Overall, movies released in China have also been grossing far less than before.

In 2019 alone, nine Hollywood movies crossed the $100 million mark there. But only 10 movies combined have crossed that number in the five years since then. All of this got much worse. in April 2025, which is when, you guessed it, Trump started swinging around his tariff threats. To which China's national film administration responded by saying that it would moderately reduce American movie imports. And since then, the approval process for American cinema has continued to tighten. Anne Sarnoff, the former CEO and chairwoman of Warner Bros., told CNBC that this really affects the economics for US-based studios.

They used to be able to count on the Chinese market to help bolster the profits on a movie. But now, when studios make financial estimates for a given movie, they put much less, or in some cases, zero, in projections for the Chinese box office. For IMAX specifically, this has become a tricky spot. 45% of all its screens are located in China, and more than 20% of its revenue comes from the country.

Naturally, as soon as Hollywood and IMAX started to lose out on a large market, they turned to another more reliable one. The Mint reported last week that all of this has pushed Hollywood towards India as the next best market, with what Nolan himself describes as some of the most enthusiastic and knowledgeable cinematic audiences in the world. Even the Ficky EY report I mentioned earlier stated that Fy26 saw 120 English language. which releases in the country, noting that it continued the trend of India being a key international market for Hollywood. But even though India is seeing success because of the deteriorating relationship between US and China, the success is still tenuous. Hollywood's own numbers

show that this is something of a boom and bus cycle. Its aggregate share of Indian box office hasn't really grown. Data from Ormax, a research program, shows a fall of 12% in in 2022 to 8% in the first half of 2026. Even PVR's own growth bet is closer to home. It recently announced an initiative called Smart Cinemas for Tier 3 India. The company is aiming to extend premium cinema access on a budget through an asset-light franchise-led model with tickets planned to be priced at around 150 to 175 rupees. The company is prioritizing volume over premiumization in some geographies,

because it knows that the kind of opportunity that came with movies like The Odyssey are not a guarantee. So, the success of theatres this quarter rests on making the most out of a scarcity situation, plus the downstream effects of geopolitical tensions. And your next ticket to the next big blockbuster has equal chances of being exorbitantly expensive and affordably cheap. It just depends on where you live.