Vinod Chopra Films and NH Studioz strike Rs 150 crore deal to revive an Indian cinema legacy

MUMBAI: Old films, it turns out, can have new lives, and rather spectacular ones at that. Vinod Chopra Films and NH Studioz have announced a long-term worldwide rights partnership, reportedly worth more than Rs 150 crore, that will bring one of Indian cinema’s most storied libraries back to audiences, restored, remastered and ready for a cinema-first return.

The scale of the restoration alone deserves attention. Vinod Chopra Films has become the first independent Indian studio to restore its entire library to 8K, with the soundscape remastered into Dolby 5.1 surround sound, a five year undertaking carried out at Mumbai’s Prasad Film Labs, with select titles handled at Bologna’s L’Immagine Ritrovata. That these films had vanished entirely from platforms since the start of 2026 makes their return all the more notable, and all the more overdue.

The catalogue itself reads like a syllabus in modern Indian cinema: Parinda, 1942: A Love Story, Kareeb, Mission Kashmir, Munna Bhai M.B.B.S., Parineeta, Lage Raho Munna Bhai, Eklavya: The Royal Guard, 3 Idiots, Ferrari Ki Sawaari, Broken Horses, Wazir, Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga and Shikara. Few libraries anywhere in the world combine that degree of commercial success with critical acclaim and cultural staying power, and fewer still manage it across four decades.

What sets this deal apart from a standard catalogue sale is the strategy behind it. NH Studioz will exclusively manage and represent the library across every rights category and platform globally, but rather than pushing straight to streaming, the partnership follows a cinema-first approach, with select titles returning to the big screen before expanding to television, streaming, FAST channels and beyond. It is a sequencing that respects how these films were meant to be experienced in the first place.

For NH Studioz, already India’s largest film rights company, the acquisition pushes its library past 5,000 films across multiple Indian languages, further cementing a position it clearly intends to defend. Narendra Hirawat, founder of NH Studioz, put the distinction between ordinary catalogues and this one plainly: some libraries entertain, others define generations, and this one belongs to the latter. Vidhu Vinod Chopra, for his part, framed the restoration as an extension of his own guiding philosophy, chase excellence and success follows, arguing the work has not just preserved the films but made the older titles genuinely accessible to a new Indian audience.

The timing looks shrewd. Classic Indian cinema is enjoying a rediscovery moment globally, across theatres, streaming and connected television alike, and a library this decorated, freshly restored and backed by serious distribution muscle, is well placed to capitalise. If the strategy holds, audiences are not just getting old films back. They are getting them back better than before, and precisely when appetite for them is peaking.