Wanted: Bollywood hits for the family audience

Traditionally, the family drama has been the strongest crowdpuller at the Hindi box office. Lately, however, the family audience is left with few options for a weekend's outing together, with films riding heavy violence and gore taking over the box office. Film experts weigh in on the trend.

What was an ideal weekend for you while growing up? For an entire generation that grew up in the late 90s and early 2000s, weekends meant going to theatres with parents, grandparents and siblings to the nearest cinema hall.

The films, which featured the biggest stars of that era, were built around the themes of love, family, friendship and shared values. Be it the emotional dramas of the 1950s and 1960s, action films of the 60s and 70s or the romantic films of the 90s, the biggest hits of Hindi cinema were designed to be watched by the entire family.

Today, that picture looks very different.

The box office is now dominated by spectacle-driven films built on heightened emotions, whether through blood, gore, war drama or intense romance. Recent Bollywood hits such as Dhurandhar, Chhaava, Border 2 and War 2 underline that shift in audience appetite. Meanwhile, the success of pan-India blockbusters like KGF and RRR – both of which did fabulous business in Hindi, too – has reinforced the trend.

Theatres increasingly thrive on adrenaline-fuelled event films, while the emotional family drama has largely moved to streaming platforms. Ironically, these family films were once Bollywood’s most reliable crowd-pullers.

As the box office gears up for the much-awaited sequel of Dhurandhar on March 19, which was the biggest hit of 2025, we ask: where have the films targeting the entire family audience gone?