How this map is made

What is on the map

The main map holds 4,264 cinemas: every cinema that sold tickets on BookMyShow or District when we read both on 23 September 2026 (4,263), plus one cinema that someone who knows the town confirmed open although it sells only at the counter. Selling tickets online is the clearest public sign that a cinema is running, which is why it decides what the map calls open.

Sources

• BookMyShow: the public "cinemas in this city" page for each of about 2,000 cities it lists. It gives the cinema's name, address, PIN code, rough location, facilities and formats. We read 3,330 cinemas there.
• District (by Zomato): the public page of each cinema. It gives a precise location, facilities, and for the day we read it, the screens with shows, the seats on sale and the languages. We read 2,415 cinemas there; 1,482 are on both platforms.
• OpenStreetMap (extract of 7 September 2026) and Overture Maps (release of 19 August 2026): open map data. They reach small towns the platforms miss, but they also keep cinemas that closed years ago.
• Wikidata: opening and closing years for a few historic cinemas.
• Local checks: facts from people who know a town, which outrank every other source.

We read only public pages, at a gentle rate, and never anything behind a login. We collect no photos, ratings or reviews.

Open, unverified, closed

Every record carries one status, and each has its own place on the site:

• Sells tickets online: on BookMyShow or District at the last check. On the main map and in "near me".
• Open, tickets at the counter: a local check found it open. On the main map and in "near me".
• Unverified: open map data calls it a cinema, but it does not sell tickets online. 3,864 places. Shown only on the unverified layer and on town pages, labelled, never in "near me".
• Closed: evidence of closing from a local check, an OpenStreetMap lifecycle tag, Wikidata, or the name itself. 61 cinemas, on the heritage list.

The Jaipur check

Before deciding how to show open-data-only listings, we asked someone who knows Jaipur to go through every one in Jaipur district. Of 19, 16 had closed, one was temporarily closed, one was open but sells only at the counter (Golcha Cinema) and one was a misplaced copy of a cinema that sells online. In a city with full platform coverage, an open-data-only cinema is therefore very likely closed. That is why those listings are labelled unverified and kept out of "near me". One district is a small sample, and small towns without any online cinema may differ; every report from people who know a town makes this better.

One cinema, one pin

The same cinema appears in several sources under different spellings ("Sri Venkateswara Theatre", "Sree Venkateshwara Talkies") and at slightly different points. We compare names with a transliteration-tolerant match, check distance, chain and PIN code, and merge sources that describe one cinema. Two listings from the same platform are never merged: platforms sometimes list the halls of one building separately, and we keep them as listed. When sources disagree on the location, the point most of them agree on wins.

Screens and seats

District shows which screens of a cinema have shows on a given day and how many seats each has on sale. A screen with no show that day does not appear, so our screen and seat counts are floors: the least the cinema has, on the date shown. BookMyShow does not publish screens, so for cinemas only on BookMyShow we give no count rather than guess.

Areas and PIN codes

A cinema's area is, first, the locality its own listing names: "INOX Sunny Trade Center, Mansarovar, Jaipur" is in Mansarovar. We check that name against OpenStreetMap's place names for its standard spelling, so "Vidhyadhar Nagar" and "Vidyadhar Nagar" are one area, and Andheri West and Andheri East share the Andheri page. With no usable label, the address decides; failing that, a named cinema within 600 m or the nearest OpenStreetMap neighbourhood within 1 km. Roads, junctions and buildings are never areas, and a cinema with nothing reliable gets none. A town with six or more cinemas gets area pages for neighbourhoods with two or more, and a page is made only when at least one of its cinemas names the area itself. Neighbourhood edges are informal, so a cinema near one may also be described as being in the next.

PIN codes are the ones the booking sites list, except where the listed PIN does not exist or India Post's own boundary for it lies more than 2 km from the cinema: then the cinema is filed under the PIN whose boundary holds it, and its page says so. Every PIN code with two or more cinemas has a page, with India Post's boundary drawn on the map.

Chains and types

A cinema counts as part of a chain only when its own listed name carries the brand ("PVR", "INOX", "Cinépolis"...). A multiplex has three or more screens with shows, or belongs to a multiplex chain; a single screen had exactly one screen with shows. Where the platforms show neither, we say the type is not known.

What we never do

• We never claim a cinema is running at this moment: we say what was true on the date shown.
• We never publish photos, star ratings or review counts from anyone else.
• We never present an unverified place as a cinema you can go to.
• We are not paid by any cinema or booking site for a listing or a link.

Corrections and refreshes

If something is wrong, report it; a confirmed correction becomes a local check and outranks every source from then on. Refreshes re-read the platforms' pages; a cinema that drops off both platforms is re-checked before it is marked closed, never closed automatically.