Why Indian Filmmaking Must Reinvent or Vanish
- Sajeev Varghese
- Apr 12
- 7 min read
For decades, India’s film industry—particularly Bollywood—has sustained itself on a deeply flawed and dangerously shortsighted business model: target the lowest common denominator, crank up the VFX and melodrama, drown it in marketing money, and call it cinema.
It worked. Until it didn’t.
The post-COVID cinematic landscape has fundamentally shifted. The audience is no longer a passive, ticket-buying monolith that can be duped by PR spins, box office manipulation, or nepotistic “star” power. Especially not India’s rapidly surging, culturally exposed, and globally aware middle class, who now demand value, not vapid spectacle.
They’ve watched The Crown, Parasite, Oppenheimer, Roma, and The Social Network. They’ve felt what it’s like to be emotionally gutted by Marriage Story, intellectually challenged by Tenet, and inspired by CODA. They've binge-watched masterclasses in writing, performance, and craft from Korean, European, and indie American cinema. And here's the clincher:
👉🏽 They’re not going back to pay ₹500 to watch something like Brahmāstra in theatres again. Ever.
🚨 The Gatekeeper Era Is Over
Production houses like Dharma Productions and Yash Raj Films once held sway over Bollywood’s narrative destiny. But today? They’re scrambling for relevance. The recent stake sale of Dharma to Adar Poonawalla isn’t growth—it’s survival. A desperate breath to stay afloat in an industry whose foundations are crumbling under the weight of their own mediocrity.
You can’t keep selling gloss without substance in a world that has tasted grit, nuance, and soul. And you can’t keep guarding the gates when audiences have already jumped the fence.
🎯 The Real Problem: The Business Model Is Rotten at Its Core
Let’s call it what it is.
The Bollywood model is not built on storytelling, character development, or global relevance. It’s built on:
Star obsession: Where performance is secondary to Instagram follower count.
Inflated budgets: Driven by actor fees, not creative vision.
Marketing over substance: Trailers that tell nothing, except how much was spent.
PR puppetry: Manipulating ratings, reviews, and box office numbers to create illusions of success.
Nepotism: That kills originality before it even knocks on the door.
This model cannot produce a film like Oppenheimer. Not just because of its lack of technical finesse or directorial courage, but because it doesn’t even believe the audience wants something like Oppenheimer.
But they do. The IMDb ratings from Indian audiences prove it. When 44.6% of Indian viewers give Oppenheimer a 10/10 and 38.7% give Brahmāstra a 1/10, the message isn’t subtle—it’s deafening.
🔍 The Ratings: A Tale of Two Cinemas
Oppenheimer (India ratings)
44.6% of Indian users gave it a 10/10
Only 3.1% gave it a 1/10
The rating curve follows a classic Gaussian pattern: natural distribution, with most votes in the 8–10 range.
This signals genuine appreciation, high viewer engagement, and earned admiration, especially from a more discerning, likely well-educated, globally-aware audience.
Brahmāstra (India ratings)
32.3% of Indian users gave it a 10/10
But 38.7% gave it 1/10—a bizarre spike in extreme negative feedback
The distribution is bimodal and distorted, indicating polarization, likely manipulation, and a dissonance between marketing hype and viewer experience.
What Does This Tell Us About the Audiences?
For Oppenheimer:
You don’t give 10/10 to Oppenheimer without watching it. It’s complex, dialogue-heavy, intellectually challenging, and emotionally resonant.
Those who rate it highly are cinephiles, critical thinkers, and emotionally mature audiences who connect with story, character, and the gravitas of real-world events.
No one stumbled into Oppenheimer expecting a visual firecracker—they came for a story and left with meaning.
For Brahmāstra:
Many of those who gave it 10/10 likely didn’t watch the film or were part of an orchestrated hype machine.
The 1/10 ratings from nearly 40% show widespread disappointment, possibly from audiences who felt misled by excessive marketing and posturing.
There is little storytelling substance, no emotional spine, and a trailer that screams “Look at my VFX!” without explaining why we should care.
🔄 Crossover? Not a Chance.
The Oppenheimer 10/10 crowd likely overlaps with global cinema lovers—the same crowd that reveres Scorsese, PTA, Bong Joon-ho, or Chaitanya Tamhane.
The Brahmāstra 10/10 crowd? Likely either star-blinded fanbases or bots used to inflate ratings—a pattern Bollywood PR machines have perfected post-COVID.
There’s almost no Venn overlap here, and that’s the real tragedy for the Indian film industry.
🧠 The Core Problem: Bollywood Still Caters to the Lowest Common Denominator
The data confirms your hypothesis: Bollywood continues to ignore its educated, discerning audience.
It chases formula, fame, and fluff, while audiences crave meaning, mastery, and storytelling.
When an Oppenheimer is embraced by Indian audiences with such consistency and respect, it’s proof that the demand exists. It’s the supply that’s broken.
🧭 The Writing on the Wall:
Brahmāstra’s bizarre rating curve is a symptom of a deeper industry rot—one that favors hype over heart, and manipulation over merit.
Oppenheimer’s rating curve is a blueprint for what works: authenticity, artistic risk, and storytelling integrity.
💥 Bollywood, are you listening?
The audience that gave Oppenheimer a standing ovation in India is real, paying, and passionate. But they’ve left your theaters for good… unless you earn them back.
🎬 It’s story-first filmmaking or bust.
Let the ratings be the revolution.
🧠 The Middle-Class Audience Has Moved On
This is India’s silent cinematic revolution: the transformation of its middle class from passive consumers to global connoisseurs of story-first entertainment.
Fueled by:
OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime, MUBI, and Disney+.
Global access to film festivals, foreign-language cinema, and indie gems.
Educated audiences with better access to critical discourse.
Higher standards of value for money, time, and intellectual engagement.
This audience is massive—estimated at 153 million English-speaking Indians (that is 10.67% of the 1.438 billion population)—and growing. And they are actively avoiding theatrical Bollywood unless it offers something exceptional from a story and storytelling craft perspective.
They’re done with the circus. They want craft.
🧱 Same Old Foundation. Same Crumbling Results.
In a world forever changed by a global pandemic, the audience evolved—but the Bollywood ecosystem didn’t.
While viewers around the world began craving more authenticity, emotional intelligence, relevance, and craft, Bollywood continued to:
Green-light uninspired remakes and outdated tropes
Over-rely on VFX and song-dance spectacles
Push movies with aggressive PR rather than compelling plots
Lie through “box-office success” declarations while theatres stayed half-empty
Confuse star power with storytelling
🧠 The Missing Element? Storytelling Craft
The problem isn’t budgets.
The problem isn’t distribution.
The problem isn’t star power.
The problem is writing.
When you chase the box office before you’ve earned narrative credibility, you end up with hollow films pushed on PR fumes.
💥 The global audience can smell manufactured mediocrity a mile away.
📉 The Result? A Creative Bankruptcy
Dharma Productions and YRF—once titans—now feel like aging monopolies who refused to evolve. What’s left is:
Industry-wide erosion of trust
Global loss of reputation
Audience fatigue and skepticism
Empty screens and “adjusted” numbers
💡The Path Forward?
What Hollywood learned with A24, what Korea embraced with Parasite, and what South Indian cinema is now modeling—Bollywood must finally admit:
🧭 It’s not about how big the movie is. It’s about how deeply it moves you.
🎬 The Call to Action:
The next wave of Hindi cinema won’t be saved by stars or slogans.
It’ll be rebuilt by storytellers who respect the intelligence of their audience.
🔧 Script-first.
🎯 Purpose-driven.
🔥 Emotionally authentic.
🌍 Universally resonant.
Because if India wants to lead global cinema again…Bollywood must learn to listen.
To its storytellers. To its audiences.And most of all—to its own conscience.
🎭 Story-first filmmaking or bust.
A National Cinematic Reset: Why Government Must Step In
Let’s be honest: this isn’t going to fix itself.
The old guard won’t change. The “star studios” will keep chasing the same tired formulas until they run out of cash or credibility. And emerging filmmakers will continue to be locked out by nepotistic gatekeepers unless someone rewrites the rules.
This is where the Government of India must intervene—not as a censor or controller, but as an enabler and architect of India’s new cinematic future.
🛠 The New Model Must Include:
National Film Innovation Fund – Investing in original scripts, first-time filmmakers, and regional-to-global storytelling with oversight on narrative quality and vision.
AI-Powered National Film Cloud – Democratizing filmmaking tools, production support, script development, and audience testing insights across the country.
Storytelling Craft Academies – Nationally certified, privately partnered institutions dedicated to screenwriting, producing, editing, and direction. With ties to global best practices.
English-Language Film Incubators – Specifically designed to produce globally competitive films for the English-speaking Indian audience, with built-in subtitling for cultural authenticity.
Merit-Based Studio & Distribution Access – Replace old-school gatekeeping with public-private merit-based greenlighting processes, incentivizing storytelling impact over social media reach.
🧭 The Future of Indian Cinema Is Global
Story-first or bust.
Indian filmmakers must now think globally, not in remakes, but in relevance. The next generation must be:
📽 Innovative like A24
✍🏽 Narrative-rich like Bong Joon-ho
💡 Disciplined like Christopher Nolan
💬 Authentic like Chaitanya Tamhane
💥 And yes, ambitious like Rajamouli—but grounded in story.
Indian cinema has the scale, talent, and diversity to become the world’s storytelling superpower. But it must shed its addiction to spectacle, celebrity, and self-delusion.
This isn’t a moment for incremental change—it’s a mandate for reinvention.
Final Word: Stop Chasing the Masses. Inspire the Masses.
You don’t build a global cinematic legacy by pandering.
You do it by daring to tell better stories.
The world is ready for India’s best cinema. The audience is here. The appetite is real. The technology exists. The opportunity is now.
All that’s missing?
🔥 The courage to lead.
💡 The vision to change.
🎭 The commitment to the craft.
To every filmmaker, studio, producer, and government leader reading this:
This is not about saving Bollywood. This is about reinventing Indian cinema for the world.
🎬 Let the transformation begin.
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