India, June 5 -- The film industry is undergoing a quiet crisis. Movie theatres, once bustling, are steadily emptying out. The reasons are many: the dominance of streaming platforms, rising ticket prices, a decline in original storytelling - and, increasingly, an audience that seems less interested in watching than multitasking.

You'd expect the staunch defenders of cinema to rally behind the communal experience. But one of its greatest champions, Martin Scorsese, has quietly taken a different stance. The man who gave us Taxi Driver (1976), Goodfellas (1990), and The Irishman (2019) now avoids theatres altogether. Not because he's turned his back on cinema, but because he feels today's theatergoing experience has.

In a recent candid con...