Mumbai's iconic Regal Cinema is struggling to stay afloat

Regal cinema, photographed on Thursday, is fighting to ensure footfall. Pic/Suresh Karkera

Yesterday, Mumbaikars woke up to the realisation that yet another SoBo institution - Colaba's Regal Cinema - is struggling to stay afloat. Early in the day, a message started making the rounds on Facebook: "Mission Impossible 6 at the Regal Cinema. Please patronise the Regal, one of the last single-screen cinemas left in Mumbai!" A matter-of-fact text that struck a chord with several cinephiles who grew up watching their favourite films in the South Bombay heritage building.

mid-day reached out to Kamal Sidhva Taraporevala, the third-generation owner who still resides in the Regal building. When quizzed why she sent out that message, she said, "The footfall is heartbreakingly low. It's a 1,100-seater cinema, and we sometimes struggle to fill 150. We have advance bookings, but the sales drops are unimaginable. I don't even want to get into the statistics, but you can imagine what it's like from the figure I gave you."

Regal Cinema is the last of its kind in the island city, and needs the support of patrons and government. Pic/Suresh Karkera

"In the 1990s, we used to run full houses. And now, we see 100-200 people on good days. It's a family business, and I sent that message out to friends who prefer to watch English movies. Distributors have stopped giving enough movies to single-screen cinemas; they prefer multiplexes. We have no control or choice over what movies we can show."

Bittersweet nostalgia
The empty seats at Regal are a stark contrast from the theatre's glory days back in the '70s and '80s, when films ran for 13 to 15 months at a stretch. "I remember that Gandhi had run for months and months, and the queue would snake right around the block. Before that, Enter The Dragon, had run for 13 months. I remember times when the challenge was to fight black market ticketing. For as long as I can remember, the cinema was always full, and look now..."

The cinema was started by her grandfather in 1933, and the building's history is part of the charm of watching movies there. But its heritage status has also made things difficult for the owner. "The business is not generating enough money for us to take on the extra expenditure of redoing it into something else, for instance a multiplex. That will be a major gamble. There is also the issue that the government won't allow us to convert it for any other business (say a restaurant). If it's a cinema, it has to be used as a cinema. This is why so many single screens are lying vacant," Kamal explained.

Picture abhi baaki hai
The challenges of running Regal are abundant, Kamal added. "Just switching the electricity on for 100 people is making it impossible to run. But even at this point, we are hopeful. We haven't considered selling out yet."

She added that a little empathy from the authorities would go a long way in protecting single-screen theatres. "There is a huge gap in protecting the interests of the single screens. Anything we need to do to keep it running has to be done privately, including generating the funds."

Also read: These iconic places in Mumbai have shut down

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