The country’s largest multiplex operator PVR Inox will open 150 screens in the next fiscal with an investment of about Rs 500 crore, a top company official has said. The company, which opened a six-screen luxury cinema at Maison Inox here on Thursday, already runs 118 screens across 23 properties in the megapolis.

Overall, including its property in Colombo, it operates 1,711 screens at 359 properties across 114 cities.

We are planning to add 150 more screens at an investment of around Rs 500 crore next fiscal, Sanjeev Kumar Bijli, an Executive Director at PVR Inox, PTI reported.

On the Maison Inox, he said normally a screen required an investment of Rs 5 crore but given that it’s a luxury collection and comes with the first attached bar (Gastby Bar), the per screen cost is about Rs 7 crore.

On the company’s overseas expansion plans, he said they will have more screens in Sri Lanka only and not anywhere else.

Despite the civil war and the deep financial difficulties, “Sri Lanka has been an extremely good market for us so far”, Bijli said.

“Given the response to our first screen in the capital of the island nation, we are planning to have more properties there. But we have no other overseas market in mind for expansion,” Bijli said.