Lights, Camera, Gameplay

Indian cinema's unpredictable future has an unexpected solution — and it lives in our gaming consoles BY ANUSHKA HALVE

- BY ANUSHKA HALVE

Indian cinema, for all its swagger, still feels a little breathless. Films like Saiyaara and Kantara: A Legend Chapter-1 have reaffirmed the star system, and juggernauts such as RRR successfully continue to cross borders. Theatres are awake again, but just barely; streaming has gone from a haven to a symptom of a larger problem. Between the spectacle and the fatigue lies a deeper anxiety: can the stories keep up with the screens?

The box office jolts, the platforms surge, the algorithms hum — but sustained attention is harder to earn. Audiences are restless; loyalty is a relic. What the industry seeks is not merely another hit, but a way to hold attention across platforms and time.

That search has led, curiously, to the joystick.

Video games have consistently outpaced both film and music in global revenue. The numbers tell the story: Grand Theft Auto V has earned over $7 billion since 2013, compared to the highest-grossing film ever, Avengers: Endgame, which peaked at $2.7 billion. Games don’t just make money differently — they make it longer, through content updates, in-game purchases, and sustained player engagement.

For Indian storytellers, long schooled in emotion and scale, that shift represents both opportunity and inevitability. The line between cinema and play has begun to blur, and Indian developers are starting to bet on the convergence.

A Market in Motion

Under PlayStation’s India Hero Project, Mumbai-based studio underDOGS is developing