New Delhi, Jan. 13 -- The decline of single-screen cinemas and the concentration of multiplexes in the top metros are narrowing options for India's movie-goers and hurting box-office collections of films, according to experts.

Single-screen cinemas, which dominated the country's theatrical landscape a decade ago, have shrunk to about 6,500 properties in 2025 from 9,500, hit by rising real estate prices and the availability of content on streaming platforms, according to experts.

The bigger concern, they said, is that multiplex growth, with only 3,700 such screens currently, is still limited to the top metro markets, alienating large segments of the population from the movie-going experience.

Simply put, India's theatrical infrastructur...