Three of the four biggest Hindi films at the 2026 box office have something in common: they are either patriotic spectacles or devotional dramas. Dhurandhar 2, Hanuman Ansh and Border 2 lead the year, and studios have spent the months since rushing to announce more films in the same two genres.
Anurag Kashyap has a blunt word for the moment: stranglehold. The filmmaker says the genre cluster has become a filter for what gets made at all.
Kashyap’s role as an ‘enabler’
Kashyap is now executive producer on Little Thomas, an independently made children’s film written and directed by Kaushal Oza, starring Gulshan Devaiah and Rasika Dugal with child actor Hridansh Parekh in the title role. It releases in theatres on October 23.
Speaking to Hindustan Times, he described his job on the project in modest terms. “I see myself more as an enabler,” he said, someone who keeps morale high and helps a film get completed and released. “Film banana hi difficult hai,” he added — making films is difficult, whatever the age of the audience.
The two genres now doing the greenlighting
The sharper claim came when Kashyap recalled a conversation with a producer. “You can make either a patriotic or a devotional film,” he said. “Otherwise, nothing else is getting greenlit. That is a fact and a tragedy.”
That framing is backed by the numbers he cites:
- Three of the year’s four biggest hits are patriotic or devotional: Dhurandhar 2, Hanuman Ansh and Border 2.
- Studios have responded by announcing more films in those genres.
- Kashyap says producers now believe only those two genres get the green light.
Does a child in the lead make a children’s film?
Kashyap also pushes against a lazy category error. A film is not automatically a children’s film because a child is in the lead. He points to the Telugu film Don’t Trouble The Trouble, starring Fahadh Faasil and backed by SS Rajamouli, and to the global series Adolescence as coming-of-age stories aimed squarely at adults.
That matters for Little Thomas because it is being positioned as something distinct: a slice-of-life film that can, in Kashyap’s words, “sneak in” while the rest of the market is occupied elsewhere. “This is not like any other film out there,” he said.
What the narrowing slate means for Hindi cinema
For audiences who follow Hindi cinema’s history, the pattern is familiar. Genres rise, supply overcorrects, and variety returns only when a small film proves an appetite exists beyond the trend. The question is whether Little Thomas finds room between the bigger releases when it opens on October 23.
If it does, the argument for a wider slate gets a useful new data point. If it does not, the two-genre gate Kashyap describes will only look more rational to the people writing cheques.
Source: The Times of India
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