The great Bollywood divide: What Indian movies lost between 2001 and 2026

The battle for the remote was real. But Saturdays made up for it. My Appa would take all of us – Amma, my brother, my sister and me for the second show at a cinema. Almost every weekend, we went to the movies.

What I remember about those getaways is that nobody ever stopped to ask whether all five of us would like the film. There was no discussion about whether it was a “family watch”, whether it belonged to a particular genre or whether someone would find it too serious or too political. Going to the cinema was a family outing and sometimes, if Amma allowed it, we would eat outside afterwards.

That kind of moviegoing feels unfamiliar these days. Watching a film today requires homework. You will end up checking what it is about, who made it, which franchise it belongs to, who stars in it, and more than that, will it be worth your time and will it mean something to you?

This does not mean that films have stopped being popular but that it might have changed its idea of the audience that it is trying to reach.

Twenty-five years ago, a film could belong to any genre and still feel like it belonged to everyone. To take an example of Bollywood movies from the early 2000s. Lagaan, Dil Chahta Hai, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham and Nayak, which were all different movies and yet were watched by all.

Lagaan, a movie about villagers challenging the British in a cricket match for tax waiving, Dil Chahta Hai showing friendship, adulthood and ever-changing dynamics of relationships. Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, a family melodrama that still gets watched by many. Nayak, a moral science exam question made into a movie that answers the question: What will you do if you get to be the Chief Minister of the state for a day?

Even with its varying content they entered the same cultural conversation. All these movies were far from apolitical. Lagaan carried the weight of colonialism and nationalism. Nayak openly discussed corruption in the political setup. Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham dealt with family melodrama and class and social hierarchy, Dil Chahta Hai captured a generation with a story of friendship and adulthood.

Their stories surrounding politics and social concerns did not prevent them from becoming broadly accessible. You could disagree with a film, laugh at it, cry over it or argue about it. The premise could be specific, but the emotions travelled.

2001 vs 2026: Bollywood then and now

From mass audience to mass constituency

The difference today is not simply that films have become more political. Politics has always been part of Indian cinema. What changed is the way identity can become part of a film’s commercial proposition.
Take some of the biggest Hindi releases of 2026: Dhurandhar: The Revenge, for instance, has become an enormous theatrical success, while Border 2 has drawn on war and patriotism, and The Kerala Story 2, with its explicitly political and ideological framing, has also found an audience. These films may differ enormously in form and intention, but they also demonstrate how a strongly defined theme can strongly motivate an audience.

The question that most productions these days cater to seems to be “Who wants to watch this badly enough?” rather than “How do we make everybody want to watch this?”

This is where audience fragmentation becomes useful for commercial successes.

In his 1992 research on uses and gratifications, David L Swanson (Understanding audiences: Continuing contributions of gratifications research) examined the idea that audiences are not passive recipients of media. People choose what they consume because they expect it to satisfy particular needs and motivations. The idea is useful here, but the argument does not need to be academic: audiences today have more ways to find exactly the kind of story they want.

This does not mean that everyone who watches a patriotic film is politically motivated, or that every political film is propaganda. It simply suggests that identity can become part of the proposition a film offers.

The audience now can do more than watch as well. They are able to make fan edits, cut reels, turn dialogues into memes, defend films from critics and fight over low reviews. The audience keeps the film alive online. The audiences are no longer merely watching films, they are actively participating in them.

The fragmentation of audiences has also been accelerated by the sheer number of alternatives available.

There was a time when films were one of the few places where a large group of people could have the same cultural experience at the same time. A successful film became something everybody knew, even if they had not seen it.

Today, one person can move between Netflix, Prime Video, JioHotstar, Zee5, YouTube, Instagram and numerous other sources of entertainment. And unlike the television schedules of our childhood, these platforms do not need to show everyone the same thing. Their algorithms are designed to give each individual something they are likely to watch.

It shows that the mass audience has multiplied rather than disappeared.

There are now many “mass audiences” – political, nostalgic, franchise-driven, generational, regional and fandom-based. A film does not necessarily need everyone. It now needs people who care enough to buy tickets, generate conversations and bring others into it.

And this is where the next disruption, AI, could push the idea even further. If OTT allowed entertainment to become more personalised, AI could make parts of filmmaking, dubbing, localisation, marketing and even content creation cheaper and more targeted. The question may no longer be how to make one film that everyone wants to watch, but how efficiently an industry can make something for every kind of audience.

But something got lost in this transition. I now rarely go to the cinema with my family. Distance could be a part of it, but so comes the matter of choice. A film I might want to watch now may not interest my brother. Something he might want to see may not appeal to my sister. We call each other for streaming recommendations instead. Sometimes, I call up Appa for the OTP to log onto the platforms.

The family movie night has quietly become four separate screens. Now, it is no longer about being in the same room watching the same thing, laughing at the same joke and talking about the film on the way back home.

The movie industry still continues to make big films, it continues to create stars, blockbusters and enormous fandoms. The mass audience has not disappeared; it has fractured into many different masses.
But something about that old moviegoing experience remains missing.

The film that belongs to everyone is yet to be made in 2026.