Screen

About Screen

Screen is an English-language film magazine published from Mumbai by Indian Express Limited, and one of the oldest continuously recognised names in Indian film journalism. First published on 26 September 1951, it chronicled the Hindi film industry — popularly known as Bollywood — for more than six decades as a weekly print publication before ownership passed to Star India in 2015 and the print edition ceased. In October 2024 the Indian Express Group relaunched Screen in a digital avatar, bringing the 73-year-old masthead back into the fold after an eleven-year gap. Across its long run, Screen documented the transformation of Indian cinema from the black-and-white studio era to the multiplex and streaming age, organised the Screen Awards from 1995, and served generations of readers as an authoritative record of box-office fortunes, star careers and industry churn.

History and Founding

Screen was founded by the Indian Express Group and first appeared on 26 September 1951, with Manorama Katju as its managing editor. In its early years it was printed as a broadsheet, and later as a tabloid, published weekly from Mumbai, the home of the Hindi film industry. The magazine arrived at a moment when Indian cinema was entering a defining decade: the Filmfare Awards had been instituted, colour film was on the horizon, and a new generation of stars was reshaping popular culture. Screen positioned itself as a trade-facing weekly — a chronicle of the business of cinema as much as of its glamour — and that positioning would define its identity for decades.

In 1959 S. S. Pillai succeeded Katju and remained at the helm until his death in 1977, a long tenure that carried the magazine through the golden age of Hindi cinema. The weekly's black-and-white pages in those years recorded the rise of the industry's biggest banners and stars, and its reporting treated cinema as a serious business long before entertainment journalism became fashionable. From the outset, Screen's content focused on India's Hindi film industry, with coverage of production, distribution, exhibition and the personalities who drove them.

The Indian Express Years

For more than six decades Screen remained a property of the Indian Express Group, one of India's major media conglomerates with publications including The Indian Express, The Financial Express, Loksatta and Jansatta. The group reported revenue of Rs 518 crore in FY24, and Screen sat within its entertainment portfolio as the film-industry specialist. During this long association the magazine functioned as both a consumer weekly and a trade paper: its box-office reporting, release schedules and industry analysis made it essential reading for distributors, exhibitors and producers, while its interviews and photo features served the general film fan.

The magazine also produced an e-magazine version as digital distribution began to supplement print. Through the 1990s and 2000s, Screen's weekly rhythm — arriving on newsstands with the latest collections data, release announcements and star interviews — made it a fixture of Monday-morning conversations in film trade offices across Mumbai. Its longevity through this period, more than sixty years under the same ownership, was unusual in Indian magazine publishing and testified to the strength of the brand.

Editors Who Shaped Screen

Screen's editorial chair was held by a succession of notable film journalists. B. K. Karanjia, previously the editor of Filmfare, edited Screen for ten years, bringing with him the authority of one of the country's best-known film writers. Udaya Tara Nayar, who had been a staff writer for the magazine, served as editor from 1988 to 1996 and again from 1998 to 2000, a period that coincided with the economic liberalisation of Indian media and the corporatisation of Bollywood.

Film journalist Bhawana Somaaya led the magazine from 2000 to 2007, years in which the Hindi film industry was being reshaped by multiplexes, overseas markets and corporate studios. She was succeeded in 2007 by Priyanka Sinha Jha, formerly of Society magazine and HT Style/Saturday. Each editor left a mark on the magazine's tone, but the through-line remained constant: Screen treated the film business with the seriousness of a trade journal while keeping the accessibility of a popular weekly.

The Screen Awards

In 1995 Screen organised and sponsored the Screen Awards, an annual ceremony honouring professional excellence in Hindi cinema. In its initial years the awards were known as the Screen Videocon Awards, sponsored by Videocon International, the consumer electronics and home appliances brand. The awards quickly established themselves as one of the industry's credible honours, judged with the involvement of film journalists and trade observers rather than purely popular vote.

Between 1995 and 1999 the ceremonies were not televised; from 2000 to 2011 they were broadcast on Star Plus, then on Colors in 2012–2013 and Life OK in 2014–2015. Generations of film stars, from Dev Anand and Nargis in the magazine's earlier iconography to contemporary names such as Ayushmann Khurrana and Ananya Panday, have been associated with the Screen Awards. The magazine also sponsored the Screen Gold Medal for excellence in direction at the Film and Television Institute of India, an honour established in 1967, linking the publication to film education.

Acquisition by Star India

In March 2015 the Indian Express Group announced the sale of the Screen brand to Star India. Under the transaction, Star acquired exclusive ownership of the Screen franchise, including its archival material and the transfer of key employees, along with the awards property. Viveck Goenka, chairman and managing director of the Indian Express Group, described Screen as one of the most reputed film and entertainment properties in the country, while Star's then CEO Uday Shankar said the acquisition would allow Star to strengthen and expand the content brand online and take the awards platform to the next level.

Following the acquisition, the print magazine ceased publication — its final issue is recorded as 13 March 2015 — and Star continued the awards as the Star Screen Awards. The sale marked the end of Screen's 64-year run as an Indian Express print weekly and reflected the broader migration of entertainment journalism from print to digital platforms.

The 2024 Digital Relaunch

In October 2024, after a gap of eleven years, the Indian Express Group brought Screen back, relaunching it as a digital-first magazine. The relaunch was announced by Anant Goenka, executive director of the group, and unveiled at an event in Mumbai headlined by actor Shraddha Kapoor, who appeared on the digital cover alongside filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani and actor Vijay Varma. With the relaunch, the Indian Express's entertainment section — which draws between 20 million and 45 million unique users a month — was rebranded as Screen.

The digital edition promises exclusive interviews, behind-the-scenes stories and industry analysis tailored to contemporary readers, carrying forward the magazine's legacy in a format suited to the streaming era. Sanjay Sindhwani, CEO of Indian Express Digital, has noted that Screen crafted coverage and reputations in an era when magazines were the only medium celebrities could use to communicate with fans — a legacy the relaunched brand seeks to extend to digital audiences.

Coverage and Editorial Identity

Throughout its history Screen's editorial identity rested on the intersection of cinema and commerce. Its pages carried box-office collections, release calendars, production announcements and trade analysis alongside interviews, reviews and photo features. This dual character — part trade journal, part fan magazine — distinguished it from purely gossip-driven film publications on one side and dry industry newsletters on the other.

The magazine dissected and analysed the moves of Bollywood's top celebrities in an era before social media gave stars direct channels to their audiences, distilling developments into in-depth stories, interviews, reviews and photo features. Its reporting on the business of cinema — financing, distribution territories, exhibitor economics — gave it credibility with industry insiders that purely consumer titles lacked.

Readership and Audience

Screen's readership spanned the film industry's professional class — producers, distributors, exhibitors, publicists and journalists — as well as the general Hindi-cinema audience. In its print heyday it was, in the words of a contemporary industry survey, one of the oldest and most reliable sources of information and analysis on the entertainment industry in India, then in its 56th year of publication. The trade readership valued its box-office data and release intelligence; the wider audience valued its access to stars.

The 2024 digital relaunch addresses a far larger potential audience through the Indian Express's entertainment vertical, with its tens of millions of monthly users, positioning Screen as a digital entertainment brand rather than a niche print weekly. The shift mirrors the transformation of film journalism itself, from weekly print cycles to continuous digital publishing.

Website and Digital Presence

Screen's official website is screenindia.com, the address associated with the brand through its print years and now the home of its digital edition. The site carries the digital magazine's interviews, features and industry analysis, integrated with the Indian Express's entertainment coverage. An e-magazine version had existed even before the 2015 hiatus, and the current digital edition builds on that foundation with a format designed for mobile and desktop reading.

For researchers and film historians, Screen's archives — transferred to Star India as part of the 2015 acquisition — represent a near-complete weekly record of the Hindi film industry from 1951 to 2015, an invaluable primary source for the study of Indian popular cinema. The relaunched digital edition, meanwhile, continues the brand's chronicle of the industry into the streaming age.

Legacy

Few Indian film publications can match Screen's longevity: 64 years as a print weekly under the Indian Express Group, followed by a digital rebirth. It documented the Hindi film industry from the early post-Independence years through the Emergency, the video piracy crisis, economic liberalisation, the multiplex boom and the arrival of streaming. Its Screen Awards honoured excellence in Hindi cinema for two decades, and its pages shaped the reputations of generations of stars.

The magazine's return in 2024, in the words of the group's leadership, rekindles that legacy in a modern format — a 73-year-old masthead adapted for an audience that discovers cinema on phones rather than newsstands. For the history of Indian film journalism, Screen remains the benchmark weekly against which the rise and fall of its many rivals is measured.