CHENNAI: It’s not a regular movie-watching experience. The space is designed with vibrant wall art with a liberal dose of child-friendly story characters to keep children engaged. The floor reflects the theme, too. Right from the couches to designs, the whole place gets a whimsical makeover. A mix of premier seating — for accompanying adults — and colourful one sets this theatre apart from the others. The city’s only dedicated theatre for children, PVR Playhouse, part of the ten-screen PVR Theatre, was launched a week ago at Uthandi.
There are nine PVR Playhouse auditorium across six cities so far. The concept with special designs was launched for the first time in PVR Logix, Noida, in 2016. Other cities include Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Surat and Chennai. This is ideally designed for kids from age three to 12 years. Alongside animated and kids’ movies, any movie that has a universal certification is screened.
The auditorium does not restrict the entry of parents. There are entertainment service providers and guest relation officers assigned to the auditorium, but they are not trained to take care of the children. The parents are supposed to take care of their children.
“This customised experience for the younger audience has received an overwhelming response in all the cities. In line with our aim to offer unique and immersive movie-watching experience to patrons across demographics and age- groups, the response for this premium format has boosted our confidence to introduce a similar format in more cities,” said Gautam Dutta, CEO, PVR Limited. Since this is a concept for children, they’ve introduced a couple of facilities from the children’s perspective.
The auditorium sound is kept lower in comparison to other auditoriums. Dimmer lights are used to avoid total blackout. Playhouses at other cities has concepts like slides, bean bags, motorised recliners and a curated food menu. “Children form an integral part of family outings. We’ve realised that nowadays children are no longer mute spectators for movie viewing.
With more Hollywood and animated films releasing every year, we decided to give children their own space. With a minimal amount of investment for conjuring a kid’s concept auditorium, we went ahead and got India’s first kids’ auditorium called the Playhouse with seating and F&B menu aligned to their liking. To ensure a safe as well as a comfortable environment for children even while the movie is playing, we keep the lights on at a low level and we have a full-fledged slide inside the auditorium which is constantly in use,” said Gautam.
PVR has plans to introduce 10 new auditoriums in the next 12-15 months across both tier-I and tier-II cities including New Delhi, Jalandhar, Hubli, Bengaluru, Amritsar, Thriuvananthapuram, Indore, Pune and Hyderabad. Further, they have made it mandatory to only play movies which are suitable for kids and which are certified by the authorities as per the certification mandate.PVR Theatre is located in Uthandi Mall, ECR (before toll gate). Tickets are priced from `161 to `345.