PVR INOX is treating the crowded December calendar as a capacity question, not a crisis. With major Hollywood and Hindi titles booked back-to-back, Kamal Gianchandani, Chief Business Planning & Strategy at PVR INOX Limited and CEO of PVR INOX Pictures Limited, told Bollywood Hungama that India’s exhibition sector can absorb two or three big releases in the same week.
His response to screen-sharing fears was blunt: “It’s a good problem to have.” Gianchandani said the programming team is experienced enough to handle the congestion, and India now has enough capacity to run multiple big films simultaneously.
The December slate, date by date
The holiday period opens December 4 with Shraddha Kapoor’s period drama Eetha. Then the calendar compresses:
- December 18: Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three open on the same day.
- December 24: Jumanji: Open World and Shah Rukh Khan’s King arrive together.
That gives exhibitors two direct tentpole clashes inside a week, plus a star-led Hindi opener at the top of the month. For cinema owners, the crunch point is showtime allocation across premium formats such as IMAX, 4DX and large-format auditoriums.
Why the capacity bet matters
The screen-sharing worry is not theoretical. When two franchise films land on the same Friday, distributors compete for the best shows, and single-screen cinemas with fewer auditoriums can be squeezed. Gianchandani’s counter is that India now has enough multiplex capacity to run multiple big films simultaneously, so the issue becomes scheduling discipline rather than missing out on a title entirely.
For streaming and TV buyers, the cinema slate is an early demand signal for eventual licensing windows. A packed theatrical December lifts the volume of high-awareness titles entering the post-theatrical pipeline months later.
The re-release test
Gianchandani also pointed to the September 25 re-release of Avengers Endgame: Encore as a read on franchise demand. He described advance bookings as “fantastic” and predicted the release will “smash all re-release records.” If an Endgame re-release performs at that level, he argued, the response to a new Avengers film is “a foregone conclusion.”
His outlook: December will be “monstrous” with Doomsday, Dune: Part Three, Jumanji: Open World and King. The phrase is bullish, but the underlying point is simple—exhibitors would rather allocate a crowded slate than manage an empty one.
What to watch next
For distribution and marketing teams, the key trackers will be opening-day advances, premium-format sell-through and holdover screens after the first weekend. If the December 18 clash holds both titles in IMAX-style formats without one wiping out the other, it will validate the capacity argument for future head-to-head windows.
Source: bollywoodHungama.com
