Old is gold: Why Bollywood is turning to re-releases amid string of flops 

New Delhi, India – When Raghav Bikhchandani found out on social media that Gangs of Wasseypur, the acclaimed Indian blockbuster released in 2012, was all set to hit the theatres in New Delhi again, he knew he could not miss it this time and even alerted several film clubs and WhatsApp groups he was part of.

For the 27-year-old copy editor, getting to watch the two-part film felt like “finally being introduced to the most memed movie in Indian pop culture” as he found himself commuting for three hours on an August afternoon to a seedy theatre in the city’s Subhash Nagar neighbourhood to catch the movie on the big screen.

“I came into Hindi cinema much later in life, and I had missed out on seeing this on the big screen. When I was studying abroad in Chicago, even NRIs in my university would quote dialogues from this movie but I had never gotten a chance to see it. So I knew I couldn’t miss this opportunity,” he told Al Jazeera.

Based in a mining town in eastern India on a decades-long feud between rival gangs mainly dealing in coal, “the black diamond”, the Anurag Kashyap-directed duology attained popularity and critical acclaim following its full-house premier at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival in France.

With an inventive cast, sharp dialogues, pitch-black comedy and gritty setting, the five-hour epic crime and political drama cemented its status as one of the most memorable Indian films of the past decade.

Actress Reema Sen poses during a Gangs of Wasseypur success party in Mumbai [File: Strdel/AFP]

But it isn’t just Gangs of Wasseypur. Bollywood, India’s much-vaunted Hindi film industry based in Mumbai, as well as regional film studios spread across the world’s most populous nation, are witnessing an unprecedented surge in re-releases of films celebrated in the past, some going as far back as the 1960s.

Dozens of such films have hit theatres in many cities this year – far more than ever before – as the country’s nearly $200bn film industry looks to revive its fortunes after taking multiple hits in recent years.

In a country like India, which produces more films a year than Hollywood, cinema is essentially a mass medium, most enjoyed in the dark and dreamy confines of a film theatre showing its latest offering on a 70mm screen. But the coronavirus pandemic hurt Indian films – as it did with movies globally. Since 2022, theatres across the world have been struggling to get people back, a crisis compounded by the rise of online streaming and OTT platforms.

India reeled under two deadly COVID-19 waves in 2020 and 2021, forcing the closure of nearly 1,500 to 2,000 theatres – a majority of them single-screen cinemas, which could not stand up to the corporate franchise-driven multiplexes mostly seen in shopping malls mushrooming across the country.

Then there is the rising cost of making a full-length film. Stars, mainly men, are now paid an unprecedented fee, some amounting to nearly half of a film’s budget. Moreover, the expense of their entourage – makeup and publicity crew, vanity vans, hotels and travel – puts further financial strain on producers and studios. Recently, prominent producer and director Karan Johar told journalists the star fees in Bollywood were “not in touch with reality”.

Bollywood actor Ranbir Kapoor promoting his 2011 film Rockstar at a college in Mumbai. The film returned to Indian theatres this year [File: Yogen Shah/The India Today Group via Getty Images]

To make matters worse, Bollywood in recent years has been witness to a string of flops, with even big multiplex chains such as PVR INOX incurring heavy losses – and therefore forced to be more imaginative in their offerings.

It was against such a backdrop that theatre owners and filmmakers decided to re-release old films. Many of films that have returned to theatres were runaway successes the first time around, while others weren’t – until now.

PVR INOX’s lead strategist Niharika Bijli was quoted in a report in September this year as saying the chain re-released a whopping 47 films between April and August this year. While the average occupancy for a new release during this period stood at 25 percent, re-releases enjoyed a higher average of 31 percent, according to the reports.

Filmmaker Anubhav Sinha, whose 2002 hit Tum Bin was released again this year to much fanfare, told Al Jazeera nostalgia has “a large role to play here”.

“There are usually two kinds of viewers going in for the re-releases. The first is the people who missed these films in theatres. Maybe they saw it on OTT and felt like having a theatrical experience of it. Or there’s people who have memories, nostalgia attached to a film, and want to revisit it,” he said.

Tum Bin’s actors: Sandali Sinha, right, Priyanshu, centre, and Himanshu [File: JSG/CP]

Indian film trade analyst Taran Adarsh agreed, saying the success of Tumbbad, a 113-minute mythological horror initially released in 2018, was proof that the formula of reruns was working. “It’s also about nostalgia, some people might want to experience the magic of a film on the big screen again,” he said.

Tumbbad did not do well when it first came out. But with rising popularity and critical acclaim, the film was re-released in September this year and went on to perform significantly better than the year it hit the big screen.

“When it re-released, Tumbbad actually collected over 125 percent more revenue in its opening weekend than it did back in 2018. People will watch things if there is word-of-mouth publicity and theatre owners and distributors are aware of it. Superstars like Shah Rukh Khan and Salman [Khan] are coming back to theatres, thanks to Karan Arjun getting a re-release,” said Adarsh, referring to the actors, who, despite being in their late 50s, continue to be the top two reigning stars in Bollywood.

First released in 1995, Karan Arjun, a rebirth-themed action drama directed by actor-turned-director Rakesh Roshan, is set to hit Indian theatres on Friday to mark its 30th anniversary, with a brand new trailer.

Veteran filmmaker Shyam Benegal, widely regarded as one of the pioneers of India’s so-called art cinema movement of the 1970s, told Al Jazeera the decision to re-release such films is taken by the producers. Recently, Benegal himself saw the restoration and re-release of his 1976 classic, Manthan, India’s first crowdfunded film for which more than 500,000 farmers contributed two rupees each to tell the story of their movement that founded Amul, India’s largest dairy cooperative.

“Because it’s a complicated and time-consuming process, you only choose to restore those movies that you wish to preserve for long. Fortunately for us, it worked out well. The restoration was excellent and we got a great response from the audiences,” Benegal said, adding that the way a film is made, and not just its themes, contributes to its intergenerational appeal.

“A movie is very much part of your own time. A film’s theme can get dated very quickly. If people across generations are reacting to it, then it might be that its message appealed to them,” he told Al Jazeera.

Acclaimed Indian actor Naseeruddin Shah, centre, his wife and actress Ratna Pathak, extreme left, arrive with others for the screening of the restored version of Manthan at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, France [File: Kristy Sparow/Getty Images]

And it’s not just Bollywood – or Hindi cinema – that’s cashing in on nostalgia for the olden days and their movies.

Mahanagar, the 1963 Bengali classic by India’s most celebrated filmmaker, Satyajit Ray, was released in theatres across India – to some spirited celebration by the fans of Ray, who in 1992 was awarded an honourary Oscar award for a lifetime of acclaimed work.

Down south, megastars such as Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, Chiranjeevi and Mohanlal also saw their popular hits making a comeback to the screens. Rajinikanth, 73 and Haasan, 70, are two of the most successful actors in Tamil language cinema, enjoying a cult following.

Sri, who only goes by one name, is a marketing professional in Chennai, the capital of the southern Tamil Nadu state. She told Al Jazeera it was the lure of Rajinikanth that first prompted her interest in the re-releases around her.

“The first time I heard about re-releases was when Rajinikanth’s Baashha was being screened again. The movie was originally released in 1995 when I was an infant, so I never got around to watching it on the big screen although it is a cult classic. My older sisters were influenced by nostalgia and wanted to go, so I also joined them,” she said.

Actors Avinash Tiwari, left, and Tripti Dimri, whose 2018 film Laila Majnu, based in Indian-administered Kashmir, had a successful rerun this year [File: Narinder Nanu/AFP]

Similarly, Haasan’s Indian (1996) and Gunaa (1991) also hit the theatres this year, as did Chiranjeevi’s Indra (2002) to celebrate his 69th birthday and Mohanlal’s Manichitrathazhu (1993).

Ajay Unnikrishnan, a journalist based in Bengaluru, the capital of the southern Karnataka state, said the trend of re-releasing old classics also marks “a form of cultural resistance”, particularly in light of the poor performance of most Bollywood flicks today.

“We just saw the release of the third sequel of Bhool Bhulaiyaa, a Hindi franchise, only weeks after the re-release of Mohanlal’s Manichitrathazhu, the original Malayalam movie that Bhool Bhulaiyaa is based on. So I see this as a form of cultural resistance because Manichitrathazhu is the original. It is so different, had more artistic value. Bhool Bhulaiyaa appropriated it,” he said.

Unnikrishnan said reruns are not a rarity in southern India’s “superstar-driven” industry. “Re-releases have always been there, it’s just that people are taking more notice now because today there’s a dearth of movies with popular appeal,” he said.

Experts and film trade analysts agree.

Ira Bhaskar, former professor of cinema studies at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, said the current phenomenon is only a repackaging of what has long existed.

“Before the era of multiplexes, films were in fact re-screened very often. If there was a Hindi movie coming out of Bombay [now Mumbai], it was quite common to see that film, say a year later in a smaller city or town like Varanasi,” Bhaskar told Al Jazeera.

While Adarsh agreed that the current trend is a “continuation of what we used to witness in the 1970s and 1980s”, he also pointed to a crucial difference: the influx of online streaming and people switching from 70mm screens to smartphones, forcing theatres to compete with other viewing options.

“But I don’t think there’s any competition because cinema is cinema,” he told Al Jazeera.

“The feeling of watching a movie on a big screen is so unique and simply can’t be matched. There will always be people who want that.”