Mumbai, June 5 -- On Sunday afternoons, the sprawling factories that make earthmovers, cars, heavy machinery and industrial goods in Chakan, near Pune, are largely empty. Gleaming yellow earthmovers, fresh off the assembly line, line the dusty roads.

This is Chakan's MIDC Phase-II, home to factories of the biggest auto and industrial manufacturers in India. And in the midst of the factories owned by Bajaj, Tata and Hyundai lies a strange white dome fronted by a low, grey facade. Enter and you're greeted with a velvety red carpet and double doors into a domed theatre with a curved screen and roughly 90 velvet seats.

This outlet of the Mumbai-headquartered Chhotu Maharaj theatre chain is showing the Marathi film Gulkand. Its 30-odd franch...