Hindi
Cut to the craft as Hirani and Joshi reveal how films truly take shape
MUMBAI: Goa may be known for sunsets and susegad, but at the 56th International Film Festival of India (IFFI), the brightest moment arrived not from a red-carpet premiere but from a classroom. Filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani and screenwriter-director Abhijat Joshi took the stage for a masterclass titled Film is Made on Two Tables, and for two hours, the auditorium morphed into a crash course on storytelling, rhythm and the secret life of cinema. No drama, no theatrics, just two craftsmen unpacking decades of craft with the clarity of a lens pointed at truth.
Hirani opened with a deceptively simple hammer-blow: “A film begins only when a character wants something. If there is no want, the audience also doesn’t want it.” In his world, a story is not about plot but propulsion. Munna Bhai wants to become a doctor. PK wants to go home. Rancho wants real education. Virus wants to always be right. Chatur wants to win at any cost. These wants aren’t decorative; they collide like tectonic plates, creating the earthquakes that make stories breathe.
Joshi followed with what became the philosophical spine of the masterclass: “Conflict is oxygen.” In life, conflict is inconvenient. In cinema, it’s nourishment. And the conflicts that truly burn, he said, aren’t good versus evil, they’re clashing truths. He recalled Javed Akhtar explaining why Deewaar has such ferocious tension: every argument is unimpeachable, and the opposing argument is just as strong. “That argument exists somewhere in the universe,” Akhtar had said. “We just have to find it.”
From there, Hirani introduced the session’s core metaphor, the two tables where films are truly made. The first is the writing table, where worlds are conceived, character arcs sharpened and emotional engines built. The second is the editing table, where the film acquires rhythm, balance and breath. Writing is the birth. Editing is the heartbeat.
For Hirani, editing is practically spiritual. “Editing is like meditation for me,” he said, not surprising from a man who famously edits for hours, oblivious to clocks. Joshi, who has worked with the legendary Walter Murch, went further: “He is the greatest editor in the history of cinema.” A statement that earned a wave of applause, partly for its sincerity and partly for how plainly it explained the coherence of the Hirani–Joshi universe.
One of the sharpest sections of the session focused on exposition, the graveyard where many scripts go to die. Joshi unpacked the Billy Wilder rule: exposition should feel like the whistle of a pressure cooker tension first, information later. Hirani illustrated it with the opening of 3 Idiots. In the first draft, Farhan simply got a phone call. Functional but flat. Shifting the scene to an aeroplane instantly transformed it into a moment of panic, urgency and hilarity revealing how much Rancho means to Farhan without spelling anything out.
Then came a masterclass in turning exposition into theatre. Hirani explained the scene in Lage Raho Munna Bhai where Munna discovers Gandhiji is a hallucination. This could have been a dull psychological reveal. Instead, they added a countdown: “I’ll prove in 60 seconds that you’re hallucinating.” The audience leans in, the truth detonates, and exposition becomes revelation.
Theme, Joshi stressed, is the soul of a film. “The moment you find your theme, the film gains its soul.” He explained how Munna Bhai MBBS is fundamentally about compassion in healthcare, 3 Idiots about chasing excellence, and PK about questioning faith. To illustrate how theme can change a filmmaker’s life, he shared a deeply emotional memory: two decades ago, he sent Hirani an early scene that didn’t work. Hirani was kind but unimpressed. The second scene Joshi sent, rooted in a story about a French freedom fighter shouting “Bullets cannot kill ideas!”, moved Hirani so much that he called Joshi in Ohio, a call Joshi described as “the most important moment of my life.”
The duo also revealed how deeply their writing draws from real-life anecdotes that linger in memory. An electric shock device installed in an Ahmedabad neighbourhood to prevent public urination became a memorable gag in 3 Idiots. A woman scratching her back with a rolling pin while making rotis inspired the unforgettable black-and-white comedy sequence. A line overheard by Salim Khan, “If I had a match, I’d burn the world” became Jackie Shroff’s introduction in one of his films. For Hirani and Joshi, if a story stays in memory for 30 years, it deserves to be in a film.
Then came the sequence that had editors in the room grinning, the making of Pal Pal in PK. The song was never shot. Not even storyboarded. Hirani assembled it entirely from unused footage, filmed Vidya Balan’s lip-sync in two hours, and stitched together a full-length song in the editing room. It was, as Joshi put it, “a miracle unfolding before my eyes.”
Hirani also revealed how the song Bande Mein Tha Dum in Lage Raho Munna Bhai became the spiritual glue of the film. Because Gandhiji could not appear in every scene, the song became his presence, a thematic ghost haunting the narrative. This was an editing-room decision, not a writing-room one. Proof, again, that the second table is where the film truly matures.
Despite all the craft talk, the masterclass often drifted into tenderness. Joshi spoke about the generosity behind their collaboration. Hirani spoke about their hunger to improve drafts. Both spoke about criticism as a gift. “If someone points out a flaw and we agree, that’s gold. We get greedy for that,” Hirani said, a rare humility in an industry that often resists rewrites.
By the time the session wrapped, the audience had witnessed something rare: not just lessons in writing and editing, but a window into two minds who believe cinema is not made on set, but in the spaces where ideas are shaped and reshaped between the writing table and the editing table. Everything else, cameras, chaos, glamour is only the world in motion. The film, the real film, is created in the quiet hum of these two desks.
Hindi
GUEST COLUMN: Why film libraries & IPs are the new engines of growth
Unlocking value through catalogue strength and IP synergy
MUMBAI:In a media landscape defined by fragmentation, platform proliferation, and ever-evolving audience behavior, the economics of filmmaking are undergoing a fundamental shift. No longer confined to box office performance, a film’s true value is now measured across an extended lifecycle that spans digital platforms, syndication networks, and global markets. As content consumption becomes increasingly non-linear and algorithm-driven, film libraries and intellectual properties (IPs) are emerging as strategic assets, capable of delivering sustained, long-term returns. For Mohan Gopinath, head – bollywood business at Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd., this transformation signals a decisive move from hit-driven models to portfolio-led value creation. In this piece, Gopinath explores how legacy content, when intelligently repurposed and distributed, can unlock recurring revenue streams, why the interplay between catalogue and original IP is critical, and how media companies can build resilient, future-ready entertainment businesses.
For all these years, we thought that a film is successful if it performs well in theatres. There are opening weekend numbers, box office milestones, and distribution footprints that gave a good picture of how the movie has done commercially and also tell us about its cultural impact. However, there are multiple platforms today, always-on content ecosystem, which has caused a shift. Today, the theatrical performance is not the culmination of a film’s journey but merely the beginning of a much longer and more dynamic lifecycle.
Film libraries today are emerging as high-value, constantly evolving assets that deliver sustained returns well beyond initial release cycles. This becomes a point of great advantage for legacy content owners with diverse catalogues, to shape long-term business outcomes.
According to FICCI-EY, the media and entertainment industry of India achieved a valuation of Rs 2.78 trillion in 2025 which is expected to reach Rs 3.3 trillion by 2028 through a compound annual growth rate of approximately 7 per cent and digital media will bring in more than Rs 1 trillion to become the biggest sector which generates about 36 per cent of overall market revenues.
This shift is the expansion of distribution endpoints. We know how satellite television was once the primary secondary window but today, it coexists with YouTube, OTT platforms, Connected TV, and FAST channels. Each of these platforms caters to distinct audience demographics and consumption behaviors, helping content owners to obtain more value from the same asset across multiple formats.
For instance, films that had great reruns, now find continuous engagement across digital platforms. On YouTube, classic Hindi cinema continues to attract significant viewership, reaching audiences across generations and geographies with remarkable consistency. At Shemaroo Entertainment, this is reflected in our film library shaped over decades as part of a long association with Indian entertainment. From classics such as Amar Akbar Anthony to much-loved entertainers like Jab We Met, Welcome, Dhamaal, Phir Hera Pheri, Dhol, Golmaal, and Bhagam Bhag, many of these titles continue finding new audiences while retaining their place in popular memory. Their enduring appeal reflects how culturally resonant stories can continue creating value over time. Similarly, FAST channels have created curated, always-on environments where catalogue content can continue to thrive through star-led and genre-based programming.
This multi-platform approach has very well transformed films into long-tail IP assets which are capable of generating recurring revenue across advertising, subscription, and syndication models.
The evolution of audience behavior is equally important. Nowadays, it’s more important to find what’s more relative than what’s recent as viewers are more influenced by mood, memories, and algorithmic suggestions than by release schedules. Even if a movie was released decades ago, it can trend alongside a newly released movie, if surfaced in the right context. Thoughtful packaging, whether through festival-based playlists, actor-driven collections, or genre clusters, allows catalogue content to remain dynamic and continuously discoverable. Shemaroo Entertainment has built extensive film libraries over decades and its focus has mostly been on recontextualizing content for the consumption of newer environments. This process doesn’t just include digitization and restoration, but also re-packaging of films as per platforms.
Syndication itself has evolved into a key growth driver. In perspective, when looking at the domestic market, curated content packages continue to find strong demand across broadcast and digital platforms. Meanwhile, in the international market, especially in markets like Middle East, North America and Southeast Asia, the appetite for Indian content is opening up new monetization avenues. Here, the ability to package and position catalogue content effectively becomes as important as the content itself.
Importantly, the need to re-package catalogue content does not diminish the role of new content. In fact, originals and fresh IP are essential to sustaining the long-term value of a film library because they act as discovery engines that bring audiences into the ecosystem, while catalogue content drives depth, retention, and repeat engagement.
This interplay between the “new” and the “known” is what defines a robust content strategy today. While new films generate spikes in consumption, catalogue titles offer familiarity and comfort. These are factors that are increasingly valuable in an era of content abundance and decision fatigue. This is also shaping our strategy, drawing value from both a deep catalogue assets and a growing focus on original IPs to strengthen long-term audience engagement and build more predictable revenue streams.
There is growing recognition that long-term value in entertainment will be shaped not only by how intelligently existing content continues to live, travel and find relevance, but also by how consistently new stories are created to renew that ecosystem. In that sense, film libraries and original IP are not parallel bets, but reinforcing engines of growth. For media companies, the opportunity lies in making these two forces work together, because that is increasingly where more resilient and predictable businesses are being shaped.
Note: The views expressed in this article are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect our own.
