In more ways than one, 2024 turned out to be a horror show for Bollywood. While the audience paid big time to get spooked in theatres, the overall business left the stakeholders ashen. Throughout the year, exhibitors complained of an unsteady flow of films persuading producers and distributors to serve nostalgia to an audience seeking happy memories after the pandemic. In comparison to a stupendous 2023, business dropped by 20% to 30% last year, as per industry insiders. 
Failing to herald the renaissance that the medium promised, OTT platforms are also going through a phase of course correction through mergers, measures to cut flab and self-censorship, leaving filmmakers in a creative limbo. And the audience, spoilt for choice on their mobile gadgets, seek more agency than just twiddling their thumbs.There is fatigue for the Hollywood superhero but the Bollywood audience embraces heroism that rises from the South. One of the abiding images of 2024 was of youngsters climbing specially erected structures in Patna’s Gandhi Maidan to catch a glimpse of Pushpa Raj (Allu Arjun). Ironically, it is the Hindi dub of the sequel of a Telugu blockbuster that saved Bollywood from blushes.Rom-com to Hor-com
Horror got mainstreamed in Bollywood as spooky stories ruled the audience’s hearts in 2024. Four of the top ten money-spinners served a heady contraption of chills and thrills topped with plenty of giggles. In times when a politics of hurt sentiments holds sway, the genre has emerged as a potent tool of subversion in the hands of imaginative filmmakers like Amar Kaushik and Anees Bazmee. If Stree 2 posited the power to vanquish patriarchy in the female protagonist’s braid, Bhool Bhulaiyaa-3 remarked that hunger is the biggest spectre and pitched a message for respecting sexual diversity in a horror comedy. Shaitaan and Munjya also packed something to read between the mumbo jumbo. Audiences also embraced the re-run of Sohum Shah’s Tumbbad, where human greed takes the form of a ghost. The trend doesn’t seem to ebb as in 2025, Ayushmaan Khurrana will take the shape of a vampire with Thama and Sohum has promised to recreate Ramsays’ cult flicks.Agent provocateur
A section of Bollywood continues to offer the tough-muscled cop as the answer to all our problems. Seen as a safe bet in times of forever agitated troll mobs, the violent State agent, who doesn’t follow the SOP, is presented as someone who would provide the common man with some agency. Rohit Shetty’s Singham Again peddled this formula with box office success and its variants in Fighter and Article 370 also scored well. With Bollywood weaponising history to fight the political battles of today, revenge and retaliation will continue to be a running theme in 2025 with Sky Force and Chhava.Outsized productsIn 2024, it became clearer that Bollywood is getting its maths wrong as it invests a disproportionate part of the film budget in the salary of the stars and their entourage. Seen as a massive case of self-goal, films making 100 crores at the box office are still considered flops because the tentpoles cost ₹200 to 300 crores to mount. The debacle of Ali Abbas Zafar’s Bade Miyan Chote Miyan illustrates the dangers of putting unsustainable, outsized products in the market.Writing on the wall
The underwhelming response to Jigra and Vanvaas underlines that credible performances can’t salvage a pretentious script. But instead of investing in storytelling, Bollywood behemoths chose to keep their works under wraps before Friday by culling press shows. Low-brow humour packaged with panache is still a safe bet as Crew and the catchy Tauba Tauba tune grabbed eyeballs for something as hollow as Bad Newz.
In contrast, riding on inspired writing, right-sized films like Laapataa Ladies, Amar Singh Chamkila, The Buckingham Murders, I Want To Talk, and Kill foundtheir way into hearts and history. Satire, musical biopic, social thriller, drama, and action, the films belonged to different genres, but each one touched a raw nerve with its intent and execution of a socially relevant theme.
Amar Singh Chamkila. (L to R) Diljit Dosanjh as Amar Singh Chamkila, Parineeti Chopra as Amarjot Kaur in Amar Singh Chamkila. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
| Photo Credit:
MUBEEN SIDDIQUI / Netflix
Vocal for localWith the catchment area of South Indian blockbusters expanding deep into North Indian territories, it has spurred a debate on how language and lifestyle no longer seem to be a limitation for a film to cross over the Vindhyas. Is it the Hindi film viewer or, as exhibitors and distributors complain, Bollywood filmmakers, in their bid to go global, forced audiences to look South for a culturally rooted experience? The love for the original has diminished the business of remakes. While Sarfira and Baby John tanked, Pushpa and Devara became household names.Call for collabAs formulae flail and streaming platforms ask for box office reports before buying a film, stars look to collaborate with successful filmmakers from the South. The gambit failed in 2024, with Baby John floundering at the turnstiles, but 2025 will see Salman Khan join hands with A.R. Murugadoss on his traditional Eid release Sikandar and Shahid Kapoor collaborate with Roshan Andrews on Deva.Beyond the obvious
In the offbeat space, Fairy Folk, Girl Will Be Girls, Despatch and Berlin made a deep impression but also raised questions about young filmmakers pandering to a foreign gaze or making films a little too obtuse for the common audience in their effort to deflect censorship. The trend will again be scrutinized this January when Sandhya Suri’s Santosh releases.
The growing trend of re-releasing old films provided a sense of what the audience is missing out in theatres. The unprecedented success of Sajid Ali’s Laila Majnu revealed that romance is still in demand and when Imtiaz Ali’s Rockstar and Yash Chopra’s Veer Zara also made a successful return to multiplexes, it indicated that the audience is missing the purity and poetry in their love stories.Props for politics
In the election year, theatres remained populated with propaganda films and biopics of the stalwarts of the Right-wing ecosystem. While Main Atal Hoon, Article 370, Swatantrya Veer Savarakar, and The Sabarmati Report were fine-tuned with provocative writing and potent performances, several others that indulged in blatant propagation of election and ideological manifesto of the party in power petered out. Kangana Ranaut’s Emergency which also, ironically, found itself in the crosshairs of the politics of hurt sentiments will possibly get a release in 2025 and so will Vivek Agnihotri’s The Delhi Files. Published – January 01, 2025 05:21 pm IST
