Construction of this cinema in Behala began in the early '60s. According to the current owner, the cinema used to originally belong to Fox Mandal that is perhaps India's oldest law firm. The Roys had taken it over from Shashibhushan Mandal. "My father, Pradip Kumar Roy, had taken over the cinema on February 4, 1970. Most probably, we had started with a screening of Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne that had released the year before. We had also screened Aranyer Din Ratri that had released on January 16 that year," said owner Prabir Roy. Satyajit Ray is said to have visited Asoka during the screening of Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne. In 1970, Asoka had screened Nishipadmo and Sagina Mahato. Initially, Bengali films were screened there. If the Bengali films didn't get screened on their release dates, Asoka would still screen them later on. Films like Picnic and Pratham Kadamphul were screened after their original release dates. Hindi films were also very popular at Asoka. During those days, another Behala cinema - Ajanta - didn't draw a good crowd. So there was a lot of demand for screening Hindi films. Sholay (1975) had run there for 22 weeks. This blockbuster was screened later than its original release date. Word has it that Sholay would have run there for 25 weeks had there not been pressure to screen another film. Naache Mayuri (1984) did a silver jubilee at Asoka. Roja (1992) and Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994) ran for 25 weeks. Bengali films like Amanush (1974) and Anusandhan (1981) were crowd-pullers too. Both ran for 22 weeks. Nagpanchami (1994) ran for 14 weeks. So did Sasurbari Zindabad (2000) did well. During that time, Asoka's seating capacity of 998. Later, the capacity was brought down to 887. Subsequently the leg space was increased and the capacity was further brought down to 613. Asoka's amplifier and sound box were changed during the release of Ram Gopal Varma's Rangeela (1995). Dolby digital was introduced in 2000 with the release of Kaho Na... Pyaar Hai. The cinema had air conditioning in 2003. Four years later, UFO digital was introduced with Shah Rakh's Om Shanti Om (2007). While Hindi films were very popular at Asoka, its owner wanted to pull the Bengali movie-going crowd too. The turnaround happened with Moner Manush (2010). Goynar Baksho (2013) did good business. Many Bengali films have run for eight-nine weeks. Mishawr Rawhoshyo (2013), Praktan (2016) and Guptodhoner Sondhane (2018) did great business. One show of Chander Pahar (2013) ran houseful for six weeks. During the pandemic, Tonic (2021) and Kishmish (2022) have run for six weeks. Belashuru (2022) did good business well.