Team Bollywood

Bollywood is undergoing a seismic shift. The old doesn’t seem to be working as it used to, and the new is confused and confounded. I talked to Siddharth Roy Kapur of Roy Kapur Films and Rohan Sippy of Ramesh Sippy Entertainment to understand the top trends:

> Collaborations seem the order of the day in Bollywood: Somebody gets the idea, someone else executes it. The audio-visual medium is a collaborative medium, says Roy Kapur, and if you want to do many things simultaneously, then you have to work as a team. So, in the case of SonyLIV’s magnificent Rocket Boys, the idea came to Roy Kapur Films from a writer, Abhay Koranne (who wrote Bhavesh Joshi Superhero, 2018) and then Roy Kapur took it to Nikkhil Advani, who has made a series of stunning shows, The Empire (2021), and Mumbai Diaries 26/11 (2021). Ditto for the moody and atmospheric Aranyak (2021) on Netflix, where Roy Kapur joined hands with Ramesh Sippy Entertainment. On Disney+Hotstar’s Human, Vipul Amrutlal Shah was working on a story about clinical trials which didn’t quite cut it. He then asked Mozez Singh to come on board. They both co-produced and co-directed the series. More minds, more hands, more scale.

> Keeping doors open to great new writers: Their minds are not jaded by multiple years of pitches. “You never know where an idea can come from,” says Roy Kapur who has many young people working with him now—including Abhay Koranne.

> The mode of exhibition has been transformed: Earlier the kind of stories being told were limited by duration and the commercial construct of the marketplace. One had to be specific about the genres and the stories one could tell. The revenue model has changed now. So, theatrical audiences can watch larger-than-life superhero big-ticket movies, while streaming audiences can focus on longer-form storytelling.

> Landscapes are changing: Mithya, Zee5’s new series based on the British show Cheat has been shot entirely in Darjeeling, with St Paul’s standing in for the university where it is based—viewers will remember it as the 2004 film, Main Hoon Na’s school. Shot after the West Bengal elections last year, the show benefits from the monsoon which hit the area, making it difficult to shoot, but adding to the atmospherics. Sippy, who shot Mithya, is an old hand at making the place the star of the show/film, from Goa in Dum Maaro Dum (2011) to Himachal Pradesh in Aranyak.

> Everyone wants it now: The hunger for “content” is so intense that writers are working overtime to turn in shows. The turnaround time is shrinking and the story often is not served as well as it should. But at least writers are getting credit upfront for their work, whether it is Kanika Dhillon for Haseen Dillruba (2021) or Mrunmayee Lagoo Waikul for the forthcoming Scoop, based on journalist Jigna Vora.

> Diversity is the key: Transgender love affairs. Lavender marriages. Depression. Bipolar disorder. Bollywood is embracing diversity as never before. As the south goes back to its conventional roots, Bollywood is swimming against the tide. Will it be successful? No one wants to be vanilla anymore.

Scene That

Nikesh Patel is slowly climbing the heartthrob status in England with every single woman’s favourite romantic lead. After Four Weddings and a Funeral (2019), the TV series, he was Tom Kapoor, the film star, in New Zealand actor Rose Matafeo’s Starstruck (2021). With the return of Season 2, his Kapoor becomes ever more charming, especially when the scene shifts to his parents’ home where they are seen as typically over-achieving Indians who are disappointed their son didn’t choose medicine over being a globally famous movie star. This is how diversity works. What began as a conscious effort to promote diversity in the early years of British television, with roles being created for pioneering Indian actors such as Zohra Sehgal and Saeed Jaffrey, has now become a natural phenomenon. It’s something Hollywood could learn, too, as it struggles with racism and sexism, which it tries desperately to correct at Oscar time. The growing number of Blacks and women among the nominees is recognition of this shift, but there needs to be less tokenism and more total revolution.

BollywoodcinemaKanika Dhillon Nikesh PatelSiddharth Roy Kapur