District Movies Scraper: India Movie Catalog, Cast & Critic Reviews

Scrape movie data from District (district.in, the going-out app by Zomato) for any Indian city, or for its full catalog of 2,000+ movies.

For each movie you get the synopsis, cast with bios, trailers, posters, languages, genres, certificate, runtime, release date, and show counts per city, language and screen format (IMAX, 4DX, 3D and others). You also get per-outlet critic ratings and critic reviews from Indian outlets such as Times of India, India Today, NDTV, The Indian Express, Bollywood Hungama, News18, Rediff, Pinkvilla, Firstpost and Taran Adarsh.

No login and no cookies are needed. The scraper is fast: a whole city takes about 15–30 seconds, and 300 catalog movies take about 20 seconds.

What you can do with it

• Box-office and release tracking. See what is playing in Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and 1,000+ other cities, how many shows each title has per language and format, and which titles are new releases or open for advance booking.
• Critic consensus. Get structured ratings from each outlet plus an average score, and join them to your own box-office or streaming data.
• Review datasets for NLP and sentiment work. Full-length critic reviews with reviewer and date, one row per review.
• Content and metadata enrichment. Add posters, trailers (YouTube links), synopses and cast lists to your movie database, app or newsletter.
• Regional cinema research. Filter by Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi and more.

Modes

Mode	What you get
Now showing (default)	Every movie currently playing or open for booking in the cities you list, ordered by District's popularity ranking. A movie playing in several cities is returned once, with a per-city breakdown of shows.
Full catalog	Every movie District has a page for: past, current and upcoming, newest first. Combine it with the release-date filters or with Only movies with critic reviews.
Specific movies	Paste District movie URLs or ids. Only those movies are scraped.

Input

Field	Description
mode	nowShowing or fullCatalog.
cities	City names, e.g. mumbai, bengaluru / bangalore, delhi-ncr, hyderabad, chennai, pune, kolkata. Neighbourhoods such as Bandra also work, and top means District's 12 top cities.
movieUrls	District movie URLs (https://www.district.in/movies/...-MV207237) or ids (207237).
includeDetails	Synopsis, cast, trailers, image gallery and all languages (default on).
includeCriticReviews	Critic reviews with the outlet's rating (default on).
fullReviewText	Complete review text instead of a ~400-character excerpt (default off).
reviewsAsSeparateItems	Also output one row per review (dataType: "review").
includeCastBios	Short bio for each cast member where available (default on).
onlyWithCriticReviews	Keep only movies with at least one critic rating or review.
languages, genres, formats	Filters. Empty means all. Formats match partially (imax matches IMAX 2D).
releasedAfter, releasedBefore	YYYY-MM-DD, today, or relative values like 30 days.
maxItems	Maximum number of movie rows (default 200, 0 means no limit).

Example inputs

Everything playing in Mumbai and Bengaluru:

{ "cities": ["mumbai", "bengaluru"] }

Telugu action movies across the top 12 cities, listing only:

{ "cities": ["top"], "languages": ["Telugu"], "genres": ["Action"], "includeCriticReviews": false }

Every catalog movie released in 2026 that has critic reviews, one row per review with full text:

{ "mode": "fullCatalog", "releasedAfter": "2026-01-01", "onlyWithCriticReviews": true, "reviewsAsSeparateItems": true, "fullReviewText": true, "maxItems": 0 }

Upcoming movies (release date after today):

{ "mode": "fullCatalog", "releasedAfter": "+1 day", "maxItems": 100 }

Output

One row per movie. The sample below is shortened:

{
  "dataType": "movie",
  "contentId": 207237,
  "name": "Resident Evil",
  "url": "https://www.district.in/movies/resident-evil-movie-tickets-in-mumbai-MV207237",
  "releaseDate": "2026-09-18",
  "isReleased": true,
  "languages": ["English", "Hindi", "Tamil", "Telugu"],
  "genres": ["Horror", "Sci-Fi", "Thriller", "Action"],
  "censor": "A",
  "durationMin": 94,
  "popularityRank": 5,
  "averageCriticRating": 3.5,
  "criticRatingCount": 4,
  "criticReviewCount": 4,
  "synopsis": "A courier is hired to deliver a package to a remote hospital. Along the way he becomes caught in a viral outbreak...",
  "posterUrl": "https://b.zmtcdn.com/data/edition_assets/17893843514534149.jpg",
  "cities": [
    {
      "city": "mumbai", "popularityRank": 8, "bookingStatus": null, "totalSessions": 204,
      "formats": [
        { "language": "English", "format": "4DX-2D", "sessions": 12, "nextShowDate": "2026-09-24" },
        { "language": "English", "format": "2D", "sessions": 117, "nextShowDate": "2026-09-24" }
      ]
    },
    { "city": "delhi-ncr", "popularityRank": 7, "totalSessions": 306, "formats": ["..."] }
  ],
  "formats": [{ "language": "English", "format": "IMAX 2D" }, { "language": "Hindi", "format": "2D" }],
  "totalSessions": 756,
  "criticRatings": [
    { "outlet": "Times of India", "rating": 4, "ratingBase": 5 },
    { "outlet": "Bollywood Hungama", "rating": 3.5, "ratingBase": 5 }
  ],
  "criticReviews": [
    {
      "reviewId": 6446,
      "outlet": "Bollywood Hungama",
      "reviewer": "Bollywood Hungama News Network",
      "date": "2026-09-18",
      "rating": 3.5,
      "ratingBase": 5,
      "text": "Zach Cregger and Shay Hatten's story is impressive as it remains in the zone of the RESIDENT EVIL series...",
      "textTruncated": true,
      "textLength": 3530,
      "outletLogoUrl": "https://cdn.district.in/movies-assets/images/cinema/hungama-....png"
    }
  ],
  "cast": [{ "id": 175621, "name": "Austin Abrams", "imageUrl": "https://cdn.district.in/...jpeg", "bio": null }],
  "trailers": [{ "title": "Resident Evil - Official Teaser Trailer", "url": "https://youtu.be/V6Zrk18sEx0", "source": "youtube", "duration": "1:46", "thumbnailUrl": "https://cdn.district.in/...jpg" }],
  "images": ["https://cdn.district.in/movies-assets/images/cinema/Resident-Evil-....jpg"],
  "bannerUrl": null,
  "sessionMovieCodes": ["OBCQPD", "OB66RB"],
  "source": "nowShowing",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-24T08:25:14.904Z"
}

With Reviews as separate rows turned on, each review is also output as its own row: dataType: "review", contentId, movieName, movieUrl, releaseDate, outlet, reviewer, date, rating, ratingBase, text, textTruncated, textLength, outletLogoUrl.

Field notes:

• averageCriticRating is the mean of the critic outlets' ratings, rescaled to 0–5. Some older titles also list an IMDb score (out of 10) in criticRatings; it is kept there but not counted in the critic average.
• isReleased is false for movies whose release date (India time) is still ahead, even if advance booking is open.
• cities[].totalSessions / formats[].sessions are the show counts District lists for that city at scrape time; nextShowDate is the next date with shows.
• popularityRank is District's own ordering of the city's movie list (1 = top). The top-level value is the best rank across your cities.

Reliability

Every run finishes with a clear status message, and you only pay for rows that actually landed in the dataset.

• Bad input never fails a run. An unknown city, a non-District URL, a misspelt mode or date ends the run with 0 rows, no charge, and a message that says what to fix (with city suggestions). Common aliases such as maxResults, limit, city, startUrls and includeReviews are accepted (and take effect even though the platform pre-fills the standard fields with their defaults). A disabled or unusable proxy setting falls back to the default Apify proxy instead of ending the run.
• Best-available data when District misbehaves. Requests retry on fresh IPs with backoff; a blocked datacenter IP hands the same request to India residential proxies automatically; a retired listing endpoint falls back to District's discovery feed; a missing catalog sitemap is re-discovered or, failing that, the run returns what is now showing in the 12 top cities and says so ("Partial — …"). A movie whose reviews could not be fetched is still delivered with its ratings, and a now-showing movie whose detail page will not load is delivered with its listing data (name, genres, poster, formats, show counts) — the status message says how many.
• Time limit and budget. The run stops about 75 s before its timeout (a fifth of the run on very short timeouts) and ends as "Partial — …" with everything saved so far, including movies already fetched when the clock ran out. With a maximum charge set, the budget is checked before each row is written, so no row is delivered unpaid and none is paid for undelivered — also with many rows being written in parallel. If the platform restarts a run (server migration), movies saved before the restart are neither written nor charged again.
• Never a FAILED run on District's account. Even an unexpected error ends the run SUCCEEDED with the rows already saved, a "Stopped — …" status and a RUN_REPORT record in the key-value store with request counts, proxy tier and per-stage statistics.

FAQ

Which cities are supported? Every city District lists for movies (more than 1,100), including all metros and most tier-2 and tier-3 towns. Common spellings like "Bangalore", "Bombay", "Gurugram" and "Delhi NCR" are understood. An unknown city is reported clearly and does not fail silently.

How much does it cost? You pay per row delivered to your dataset: $2 per 1,000 movies, and $0.50 per 1,000 review rows. Review rows are only created when Reviews as separate rows is on; the critic ratings and reviews inside each movie row are included in the movie price. There is no start fee, and failed requests, movies removed by your filters and rows beyond your charge limit are never billed. For example, everything showing in Mumbai (about 40 movies, with details and reviews) costs about $0.08, the 12 top cities (about 120 movies) about $0.24, and the full catalog of about 2,300 movies about $4.60.

Are the critic reviews complete? You get the reviews and ratings District displays on each movie page, with the reviewer, date and outlet. District mainly shows positive and mixed reviews: nearly every rating on the site is 3/5 or higher. Treat the data as "critic reviews as displayed on District", not an unbiased sample of all reviews. For balanced sentiment analysis, combine it with other sources.

Why is review text shortened by default? Reviews belong to their publishers. The default output is an excerpt plus the full length. Turn on Full review text to get the complete text for research use.

How many movies have critic reviews? Usually the big Hindi, English and South Indian releases. That is about a third of what is playing in a major city on a given day, and about 250 movies (roughly 1 in 9) across the full catalog, with 600+ reviews in total. Scanning the whole catalog for them takes about a minute.

Does it include showtimes, cinemas and ticket prices? This actor returns show counts per city, language and format. For individual showtimes, cinemas, seat prices and occupancy, use a dedicated District showtimes scraper.

How fast is it? One city takes about 5–30 seconds with details and reviews. The full catalog runs at about 10–15 movies per second.

Audience ratings and "interested" counts? District does not publish these to logged-out visitors, so they are not included.

Is it legal to scrape District? This actor collects only public information that District shows to every visitor without an account: movie titles, synopses, cast lists, trailers, show counts, and the critic ratings and reviews displayed on each movie page. Scraping publicly available data is generally legal, but you are responsible for how you use the results. Rows include the names of actors and film critics, and short cast bios where District has them, which can count as personal data, so only keep and use it for a legitimate purpose. Critic reviews remain the work of their publishers: the default excerpt suits reference and analysis, and republishing full review text may need the publisher's permission. Follow the laws that apply to you (such as India's DPDP Act, GDPR, PIPEDA or CCPA) and District's terms, and check with a lawyer if you are unsure. Read more in Apify's guide Is web scraping legal?

Does it access any private data? No. The actor needs no District account, login, cookie or phone number, and never sees anyone's bookings, payment details or profiles. It reads the same public movie listings, movie pages and critic reviews that the District website shows to a visitor who is not logged in. Audience reactions that District shows only to signed-in users are not collected.