From cavernous auditoriums that were hard to fill to more manageable multiplexes showing several films, audiences in Indian cities are rapidly getting used to a new movie culture that seems to make more business sense.

The profusion of multiplexes in urban centres has given alternative cinema a chance, with films like Rahul Bose's "Everybody Says I'm Fine" or even Michael Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" getting a release. And it has also worked for the exhibitor.

While the jury is out on whether the high cost of setting up a multiplex could mean that fast money spinners and biggies still get preference, the sheer number of screens coming up all over the country is argument enough that they are here to stay.

The four-screen INOX multiplex was set up in this Goa capital in time for the 35th International Film Festival of India (IFFI), which could become a permanent venue for the annual event.

Costing Rs. 240 million ($5.4 million), Goa's first government-backed multiplex was launched in early November amid doubts of its long-term financial viability. It has been built along the Panaji riverfront, in a prime location on the site of a demolished hospital complex.

Another one has come up in Margao, the south Goa town 30 km from here.

INOX Leisure, which runs the Panaji multiplex, also has plans to build another multiplex at Mumbai's downtown Nariman Point at a cost of Rs. 500 million.

The company's plans for the future include investments of Rs. 750 million to Rs.1 billion in multiplexes in Chennai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore in the next year. Kochi and Allahabad would follow too to complement its theatres in Kolkata, Pune and Baroda.

In all, INOX plans to have 100 screens nationwide.

The other big player on the scene is PVR Limited with a turnover of Rs. 630 million in 2003-04. Last month it inaugurated the "country's largest multiplex" in Bangalore with 11 screens and 2,015 seats.

The company already has five multiplexes in New Delhi and three more in its suburbs -- one in Gurgaon with seven screens and two in Faridabad.

Its plans for the future include three more screens in New Delhi, four in Hyderabad and 13 in Mumbai.

"This expansion would mean an investment of over Rs. 1.2 billion, which is possibly the largest investment that the film entertainment industry will see from a single company in the current and next fiscal," said an official at the ongoing IFFI.

Alternate and smaller filmmakers are hoping that this profusion might allow their films to reach the audiences and enable them to dent the hard-to-break-into distribution network.

The flip side of this is, of course, high ticket prices which range between Rs. 150 and Rs.200. These high rates are despite the government lifting entertainment taxes on some new multiplexes and giving them forms of subsidies.

True, a family often ends up spending Rs. 1,000 on three hours of entertainment. But, as the success of the multiplexes in Indian cities has shown, the money is definitely not a deterrent.