Hindi
Bodyguard: A Salman Khan film all the way
Mumbai : Atul Agnihotri‘s Bodyguard is like a sequel to recent successful Salman Khan movies and, in keeping with the trend of sequels, can be called Super Human 4; the film relies solely on Salman Khan and the action choreographed around him.
Like all film heroes, he can take on a dozen or more goons and has made a reputation out of it; he can fight like a robot. The film has been adapted from the Tamil film Kaavalan that was also made in other South Indian languages. Like many South Indian films, the story swings between feudal and modern era.
Raj Babbar is some sort of feudal lord whose word is the law and justice in his town. He crosses paths with a flesh trade gang run by Aditya Panscholi, Mahesh Manjrekar, Chetan Hansraj and their goons who sell young girls abroad.Wanting to get even with Babbar, they decide to kidnap his daughter, Kareena Kapoor.
Enter Salman Khan, a bodyguard deployed to protect her while she goes to hostel to finish her studies along with her friend and confidante, Hazel Keech. His boss Sharat Saxena assures Babbar that Salman is worth an army of guards and can take on any number of villains which is amply demonstrated by Salman Khan on the onset when he rescues the girls meant for export at Raj Babbar‘s behest.
Kareena Kapoor has no clue why she needs a bodyguard. The arrangement does not quite go well with her, whose idea of campus life is not one where a bodyguard lingers around all the time, be it in a class room or canteen. She plots to distract Khan by assuming a false name and starting to call him on his cell phone, thus luring him into romance.
That is until an attempt is made to kidnap her from a disco. Seeing Salman Khan‘s courage as he saves her from a horde of attackers, she instantly falls in love with him. That accounts for the romance part of the film as Kareena Kapoor loves Salman Khan, who in turn loves Chhaya, which is the identity Kareena assumed when making the calls.
As Salman Khan vanquishes all the bad guys and thinks that he will go back to his phone lover Chhaya, he is separated from Kareena whose friend Hazel Keech ends up marrying him as Chhaya till she conveniently dies of some ‘bimari‘ leaving behind a stereotypical bespectacled child to bring together the lovers, Salman and Kareena Kapoor, who too thought it was prudent to stay single.
Bodyguard is totally a script of convenience – the kind dished out in the 1950s and ‘60s – where everything falls in place as if on cue. There is nothing original or novel that one has not seen before. The direction is ordinary. Music is generally mediocre; a love story merits a much better score. Dialogue is routine and the comedy lacks humour. Photography is good.
Performance-wise, it is a Salman Khan film all the way as he alternates between spreading his charm and flexing his muscles. Kareena Kapoor is good, doing better in emotional scenes. Hazel Keech makes a single expression last throughout the film. Raj Babbar carries himself well while Rajat Rawail‘s attempts at comedy falls flat. The bad men have little to do except emerge suddenly for a few actions scenes and they are adequate.
The film is a run-of-the-mill story with its saviours being Salman Khan‘s current popularity coupled with Eid and Ganpati holiday release and the ensuing weekend which gives it five days of free run to make the most of its about 2,700 screen release before it runs out of steam.
Hindi
Jio Studios unveils AI-powered Krishna teaser at NAB Show 2026
Global first look of Krishna uses Galleri5 AI pipeline on Azure, Historyverse slate as Jio’s Dhurandhar crosses Rs 3,000cr worldwide.
MUMBAI: Krishna has just dropped a divine teaser and this time the gods are powered by silicon, not just scripture. Jio Studios and Collective Studios’ Historyverse stole the spotlight at the NAB Show 2026 in Las Vegas with the world’s first teaser for their upcoming theatrical feature Krishna, directed by Manu Anand. The big reveal happened during Microsoft’s keynote “Powering Intelligent Media, From AI Experimentation to Real-World Impact,” where the film’s AI-native production pipeline took centre stage alongside Collective Artists Network’s in-house platform, Galleri5.
At the heart of this mythological spectacle lies a fresh cinematic workflow built by Galleri5 on Microsoft Azure’s advanced AI and cloud infrastructure. Forget bolting AI onto traditional VFX or animation, this is an end-to-end, production-grade system woven into every layer: world-building, character creation, shot design and final output. Yet the storytelling remains firmly director-led, emphasising emotional depth, stillness, music and performance rather than pure spectacle. The result? Large-format theatrical cinema rooted in Indian history and culture, but conceived in ways that were simply not possible before.
Collective Artists Network runs Galleri5 natively on Azure, leveraging Microsoft Foundry and cutting-edge AI tools to handle film, episodic and advertising workflows in a secure enterprise environment. Microsoft highlighted Collective as a “Frontier” organisation successfully moving AI from pilot projects to real production-scale deployment in cinema. The technology is also on display at Microsoft’s NAB booth in the West Hall (Booth W1731).
Jio Studios (Media & Content Business, Reliance Industries), president Jyoti Deshpande said the project advances the studio’s mission to take Indian stories global with scale, ambition and authenticity, “With Krishna, we are embracing cutting-edge AI-led filmmaking while democratising these tools to make them more accessible, intuitive and cost-effective for storytellers everywhere.”
Collective Artists Network founder & group CEO Vijay Subramaniam added, “We’re using technology developed in India to carry our culture and history to audiences worldwide at a scale never seen before.”
Microsoft, vice president for telco media & entertainment, gaming Silvia Candiani noted that the media industry has reached an inflection point, “AI is no longer about experimentation but delivering real impact at production scale… By building AI-native creative systems on Microsoft Azure, Collective exemplifies how storytellers can unlock new formats, move faster and realise a true return on intelligence while keeping human creativity at the centre.”
Krishna forms part of Historyverse, Collective Studios’ ambitious slate of history and culture-driven IPs. The slate draws from iconic figures and traditions that shaped the Indian subcontinent, including stories inspired by Kali, Karna and Durga. It builds on the already-released Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh series, showing how ancient narratives can be reimagined for modern screens.
Jio Studios, India’s leading content studio and the media and content arm of Reliance Industries, continues its blockbuster run. The studio’s Dhurandhar franchise led by Dhurandhar and Dhurandhar: The Revenge has become the first Indian film series to cross Rs 3,000 crore worldwide. It also delivered three consecutive years of India’s highest-grossing Hindi films: Stree 2 (2024), Dhurandhar (2025) and Dhurandhar: The Revenge (2026). In just eight years, Jio Studios has assembled a library of over 160 films and series, with more than 60 titles winning over 500 awards. Other notable successes include Laapataa Ladies (India’s official Oscar entry 2025), Stree, Article 370, Shaitaan and Mrs.
The NAB unveiling marks another step in Jio Studios and Collective’s push to blend Indian storytelling talent with frontier technology proving that the future of cinema may well be both ancient in spirit and thoroughly modern in execution. For audiences who love epic tales with a fresh twist, Krishna promises to deliver divine drama, this time with a little help from the cloud.
