The Biopic Boom: Six Real Lives Indian Cinema Is Racing to Tell at Once

Indian cinema is in the middle of an unusually dense biopic cycle. On the current slate: Khashaba, on Olympic wrestler Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav; V. Shantaram, on the pioneering filmmaker; The Pride of Bharat, on Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj; Kalam, with Dhanush playing Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam; and Eetha, Shraddha Kapoor's turn as the tamasha legend Vithabai Narayangaonkar, listing 28 August.

The newest and biggest addition is Lalkaara, based on cricketer Lala Amarnath, with Aamir Khan attached and production shared between Excel Entertainment and Rajkumar Hirani Films. According to trade reports, the screenplay is being written by the same team behind Dangal and Nil Battey Sannata, a pairing that immediately raises the bar: Dangal remains the standard every sports biopic in this country is measured against.

The commercial logic behind the cycle is straightforward. A biopic arrives with built-in audience recognition and, when the subject is chosen well, a ready-made emotional arc that doesn't need three acts of setup. The risk is equally well understood in the trade: with six in production at once, audiences are being asked to choose between them rather than treat any single one as an event, and the genre only works when it feels rare.

What's notable this cycle is the range of subjects being greenlit beyond the usual cricket-and-freedom-fighter default: a folk tamasha performer, a filmmaker, an Olympic wrestler most young audiences have never heard of. It's the most interesting biopic slate the industry has assembled in years, precisely because it isn't only telling the stories everyone already expects.