By the time Nikamma opened on June 17, 2022, the Hindi remake playbook had already changed. Directed by Sabbir Khan and led by Shilpa Shetty, Abhimanyu Dassani and Shirley Setia, the film had been shot in 2019 as a remake of the 2017 Telugu hit Middle Class Abbayi. Had it arrived before the Covid-19 lockdowns of March 2020, it might have found a familiar audience. Instead, it landed in a market that had spent two years watching dubbed South Indian originals at home.
A delayed release met a changed audience
In a Bollywood Hungama interview, Sabbir Khan agreed that the delay was decisive. “It was conceptualized and made at a different time,” he said, adding that the two-year lockdown altered viewing patterns and intake.
The problem was bigger than one film. By 2022, audiences had already consumed several popular South Indian mass entertainers in their original dubbed versions. The appetite for a Hindi version of the same story had shrunk. Jersey, another post-pandemic remake, faced a comparable challenge, with the popularity of the original’s dubbed version cited as a factor in its muted response.
Sabbir framed Nikamma’s failure inside a broader industry trough. Most films that year were struggling, he observed, and a wave of anti-Bollywood sentiment was still running. His reading is that the reset will come from filmmakers who have understood a simple lesson: the audience will not settle for mediocre content.
The long game of launching new faces
Sabbir’s career has been unusually tied to debut-making. Heropanti (2014) introduced Tiger Shroff and Kriti Sanon; Munna Michael (2017) introduced Nidhhi Agerwal. He described that mix of veterans and newcomers as deliberate.
“That becomes your glory in so many ways, as you are pushing newer talent. If nobody is going to do that, imagine the state we are going to be in.”
Kriti Sanon recently mentioned a long, warm message Sabbir sent her after Cocktail 2 (2026). Tiger Shroff, with whom Sabbir worked on Heropanti, Baaghi (2016) and Munna Michael, remains “like family,” the director said.
Mass cinema’s moving definition
This is the larger point for an audience that follows Hindi cinema as a record. Sabbir argued that the meaning of mass has shifted. The mass audience is now more educated, constantly on social media, and aware of global storytelling. Therefore, commercial cinema cannot rely on old formulas.
- Dubbed originals now condition audiences before a Hindi remake can arrive.
- Newcomers need established stars around them, but the industry must keep making room for new talent.
- Mass entertainment has to balance scale with contemporary intelligence.
His prescription is direct: “It should reach out to maximum people but with intellect. We can’t recycle the same tropes; it won’t work.”
For now, Sabbir Khan says he is back in the writing room, working on “a couple of exciting story ideas.” The near-term test is whether that evolved idea of mass cinema translates into films that draw the broad audience back without repeating the past.
Source: bollywoodHungama.com
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