AI<\/a> reconstructions so that the romantic lead survives. The new closing sequence \u2014\u00a0fully synthetic \u2014\u00a0ends with the opposite of the original\u2019s tragic note, as Dhanush\u2019s character wakes up and smiles in a hospital bed, having survived the assassination attempt. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\nThe film\u2019s director and star were vehement in their opposition to the re-release \u2014 \u201cThis alternate ending has stripped the film of its very soul, and the concerned parties went ahead with it despite my clear objection,\u201d Dhanush wrote on social media, adding that AI alterations \u201cthreaten the integrity of storytelling and the legacy of cinema\u201d \u2014\u00a0but their protests proved insuffient to stop the release.\u00a0
Eros responded forcefully, contending that as the \u201csole financier, producer and rights holder of\u00a0Raanjhanaa,\u201d it is the \u201clegal author of the film\u201d under Indian copyright law, and thus free to do with the finished work whatever it pleases.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt was quite painful,\u201d Rai, known for directing some of India\u2019s biggest romantic dramas of the past decade, says of the experience. \u201cI was hurt that the ending of my film was being changed and that someone was playing with the emotions in my work.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe consensus within the industry was that Eros\u2019 contention was probably legally sound,\u00a0no matter how morally dubious its treatment of its creative collaborators might seem. The crux comes down to contacting and bargaining power, and most industry agreements in India are currently written in an all-encompassing fashion, lacking specifics, and allowing studios to exploit a work across all modes, mediums, formats and technologies, whether they exist today or are developed in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn many cases, an actor\u2019s [or director\u2019s] services are rendered on a work-for-hire basis, which means the studio becomes the first owner of the material created,\u201d says Priyanka Khimani, a leading entertainment and music lawyer based in Mumbai.\u00a0\u201cA studio could argue that it is simply modifying a character that belongs to the film.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe only factor that seemed to give Eros pause was the public reaction from fans of the original\u00a0Raanjhanaa, scores of whom slammed the AI remix on social media (a non-negligible number of others, however, went to see the re-release out of curiosity, with some even posting that they preferred the happy ending).<\/p>\n
\n\tPradeep Dwivedi, Group CEO of Eros Media World, says the studio never intended to \u201creplace\u201d the original film.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWhat we explored was a clearly labelled AI-assisted alternate interpretation,\u201d Dwivedi tells THR via email, describing the move simply as an attempt to see whether new technologies could allow audiences to revisit familiar stories in novel ways. But the company nonetheless appears to have become more cautious in the wake of the Raanjhanaa episode. The Eros CEO says the episode left him to reflect on how films are \u201cnot just intellectual property\u201d but also \u201cemotional memories\u201d for audiences and creators.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tIndian entertainment insiders, however, say the\u00a0Raanjhanaa\u00a0controversy is most notable not for the brazenness of Eros\u2019 actions, but for the fact that there was any controversy at all. With a few notable exceptions among established autuers, India\u2019s filmmaking community has been open and vocal in its full-throated embrace\u00a0of AI. Nearly every stage of filmmaking in the country \u2014 from writing and pre-visualization\u00a0to post-production and fully AI-generated features \u2014 is now being reshaped by artificial intelligence as an indispensable collaborator.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe contrast could hardly be starker with Hollywood, where the creative community\u2019s relationship with Silicon Valley has curdled over the past decade \u2014 a cumulative bitterness born of the smartphone\u2019s corrosive impact on U.S. political discourse, streaming\u2019s erosion of the theatrical model and back-end profit participation, and the relentless consolidation of an entertainment industry that once sustained a much broader middle class of working artists. Having watched big tech disrupt nearly every revenue stream that once sustained their livelihoods, Hollywood\u2019s creative guilds were not about to be sold another tale of technological liberation. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes of 2023 were fought, in significant part, to establish contractual guardrails around AI \u2014 and the guilds continue to push for greater enhancements to those protections.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut while Hollywood remains roiled in debate over whether AI belongs on a film set at all, India has already moved on. The country has no empowered industry unions to push for caution \u2014 and much like the U.S., national legislation introducing regulation around AI use and employment protection has been non-existent. Instead, studios, startups, and individuals have been experimenting openly, ambitiously, and, some would argue, recklessly. As a result, the technology is being woven into the production pipeline at every level, with most practitioners unapologetically bullish about its potential.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tDipankar Mukherjee, co-founder and CEO of Mumbai-based Studio Blo, recently announced a sci-fi series,\u00a0titled\u00a0Warlord, to be directed by acclaimed Indian filmmaker Shekhar Kapur, but created entirely using AI tools. Mukherjee estimates that around 80 percent of Indian films are already using AI extensively in pre-visualization. His company has built its own platform, Kubrick \u2014 named after the legendary director \u2014 designed to help filmmakers who may not be fluent in prompting tools. Directors upload a shot breakdown, answer a series of questions about characters and locations, and the system generates a storyboard that can be refined from there. The technology is also compressing timelines dramatically. \u201cFor a feature-length film made entirely with AI, our production timelines are typically between six and 12 months,\u201d Mukherjee said. \u201cTo put that into perspective, a traditional animated feature might take two to three years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tColorist Sidharth Meer, whose credits include India\u2019s 2025 Oscar entry\u00a0Homebound, relies on AI-powered tools such as DaVinci Resolve and Baselight to reduce tasks that once took hours to a fraction of that time. On the 2024 action film\u00a0Jigra, his team used face-tracking tools to isolate and subtly enhance Alia Bhatt\u2019s eyes \u2014 work that would previously have required painstaking frame-by-frame rotoscoping. \u201cWithout tools like this,\u201d Meer says, \u201cyou would have to manually track those elements frame by frame, which is extremely time-consuming.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-hollywoodreporter-2021\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tColorist Sidharth Meer used face-tracking tools to isolate and enhance Alia Bhatt\u2019s eyes in 2024 action film Jigra. <\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy<\/p>\n
\n\tCinematographer Siddharth Diwan \u2014 known for his striking visuals in\u00a0Bulbbul\u00a0(2020) and\u00a0Qala\u00a0(2022) \u2014 has found AI particularly useful when trying to communicate ideas that resist verbal description. Working on an ambitious mythological epic, he wanted moonlight to appear golden for biological reasons relating to how the eye perceives light. \u201cWhen I explained it verbally, people weren\u2019t sure how it would look,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I generated images using AI to demonstrate the concept, and that worked.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tMeanwhile, in the Malayalam film industry, the 2025 feature\u00a0Rekhachithram\u00a0went further still \u2014 deploying a de-aged AI composite of 74-year-old superstar actor Mammootty, created by feeding more than a thousand photographs of the actor from his younger years into an AI system. The team also used AI to alter the lip movements of the late John Paul, the celebrated Malayalam screenwriter who died in 2022 and who appears in the film via archival footage in scenes recreating the production of Bharathan\u2019s 1985 classic\u00a0Kathodu Kathoram, for which Paul wrote the screenplay. Using AI, the filmmakers adjusted Paul\u2019s lip movements in the found footage to make him appear to deliver new lines of dialogue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tAudiences didn\u2019t flinch.\u00a0Rekhachithram\u00a0became the first superhit of 2025 in the Malayalam industry, grossing more than \u20b957 crore ($6.7 million) worldwide against a modest budget. The AI elements provoked no discernible backlash; if anything, the novelty of \u201cAI Mammootty\u201d fueled audience curiosity and media coverage that amplified the film\u2019s commercial run.<\/p>\n
\n\tNobody has pushed the technology further, or more cheaply, than director Rahi Anil Barve, the cult filmmaker behind Tumbbad, a visually ravishing 2018 folk-horror hit. His 80-minute AI feature\u00a0Mann Pisahach\u00a0was completed for under \u20b933,000 \u2014 roughly $360. Barve shot two actors on his iPhone, then used AI to generate their costumes, production design and the entire world around them. To work around AI\u2019s well-documented limitations with facial expression and dialogue, he designed the film without spoken words, relying instead on a narrator\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cInstead of trying to force AI to generate everything from scratch \u2014 which often looks unreal \u2014 I tried to recreate what I had already shot,\u201d Barve explained. \u201cIf the machine can replicate something that already exists, the result becomes more believable.\u201d The experience convinced him that filmmakers who want to use AI seriously will need to develop \u201can entirely new storytelling language.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThat kind of creative rethinking is exactly what drives writer-director Shakun Batra (Kapoor & Sons,\u00a0Gehraiyaan), one of the earliest mainstream Indian filmmakers to experiment with AI tools. Through his company Jouska AI, Batra\u2019s team is using generative systems including Midjourney, Google Veo and ElevenLabs \u2014 not just for mood boards, but for full advertising productions and early-stage feature development.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIdeally, the future is hybrid,\u201d Batra said. \u201cYou might still shoot actors and performances in traditional ways, but use AI for world-building, environments, or sequences that previously required enormous budgets. But speed alone does not guarantee meaning. Just because something can be generated quickly does not mean it has emotional depth. The real work still lies in intention.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe commercial logic is hard to argue with. Vijay Subramaniam, founder and CEO of Collective Artists Network, believes AI could fundamentally alter the cost equation of Indian cinema. \u201cCan you realistically make a $200 million film in India today? Probably not, because the screen capacity cannot support that level of budget,\u201d he said. \u201cBut if technology allows you to tell the same scale of story for $50 million instead of $200 million, everything changes.\u201d His company\u2019s tech arm, Galleri5, has a team of more than 50 engineers developing what Subramaniam calls \u201cIndia\u2019s largest AI slate\u201d \u2014 micro-dramas, digital avatars of celebrity talent, theatrical films and web series.<\/p>\n
\n\tHollywood\u2019s top creatives, for the most part, are watching from a distance. James Cameron has called AI-generated actors \u201chorrifying.\u201d Steven Spielberg has said he\u2019s against any use of AI that replaces creative individuals. Guillermo del Toro has perhaps gone farthest, telling NPR he would \u201crather die\u201d than use generative AI in his work. Batra understands those concerns \u2014 but argues that they come from a position of extraordinary privilege. \u201cThey are speaking from the top of a very established industry,\u201d he said. \u201cAn 18-year-old in the state of Madhya Pradesh who wants to be a filmmaker is in a very different position. That person might not have access to studios, actors or budgets. They are not going to wait ten years for permission to make their first film.\u201d Filmmaking, he suggests, may eventually resemble music production \u2014 where what once required orchestras and large studios can now be done in a bedroom.<\/p>\n
Not everyone finds comfort in the democratization narrative, though. Skeptics point out that this argument, almost beat for beat, repeats the false promise that has accompanied every stage of the internet\u2019s development \u2014 transformative potential for individual creators, followed by a ruthless consolidation that proves arguably worse than the old system and its gatekeepers: a handful of all-powerful platform winners presiding over legions of low-cost content producers, with nearly everything in the middle that once sustained a humane creative economy hollowed out. The most ambitious AI bets in Indian entertainment are being placed not by bedroom auteurs but by India\u2019s conglomerates and industry giants like Reliance, Prime Focus and well-capitalized production houses \u2014 companies with the resources to build proprietary pipelines and acquire the smaller numbers of talent needed to run them.
But as the debate over AI\u2019s creative merits continues, some corners of the Indian entertainment sector may already be past the point of negotiation.<\/p>\n
India\u2019s dubbing industry \u2014 a vast ecosystem of roughly 20,000 freelance voice artists servicing a film market that spans more than ten major languages and dozens of regional star systems \u2014 is confronting an existential threat. The corporate logic is merciless: if AI-generated dubbing is truly indistinguishable from the human original, and can deliver a Hindi blockbuster in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, and half a dozen other languages simultaneously, at a fraction of the traditional cost, the business case for employing large pools of human voice talent is over.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This scenario is no longer hypothetical. Veteran voice artist Ghazal Khanna, who has dubbed titles for Netflix in India, such as the hit Korean mystery series The Frog, estimates that around 70 to 80 percent of brand voices for major Indian TV and video commercials have already been replaced by AI. A similar progression is underway in narrative film and TV dubbing. Yash Raj Films\u2019 action sequel\u00a0War 2, released in late 2025, became a landmark demonstration of AI use in the sector: filmed in Hindi, the movie was released across multiple languages using NeuralGarage\u2019s \u201cVisualDub\u201d tool, which subtly adjusts actors\u2019 lips and facial expressions so that Hrithik Roshan\u2019s Hindi dialogue appears to be spoken naturally in Telugu. Even co-star Jr. NTR \u2014 himself a Telugu-language star who delivered his lines in Hindi on set \u2014 had his own voice and perfectly synced face restored in the Telugu version. The Amarinder Singh Sodhi, general secretary of India\u2019s Association of Voice Artists, has sounded the alarm. \u201cIf AI takes over, we are finished,\u201d he has said.<\/p>\n
The biggest players are moving fast. Reliance\u2019s streaming platform JioHotstar, the country\u2019s biggest local video service and a joint-venture partner with Disney, has announced it will integrate its AI-powered \u201cVoice Print\u201d technology at platform scale, using voice cloning and lip-sync tools to localize its library of films, series, and sports commentary across languages at high speed and low cost. Director M.G. Srinivas was so impressed by AI voice cloning \u2014 which he used to dub actor Shiva Rajkumar\u2019s voice from Kannada into three other languages for the film\u00a0Ghost, with results he says audiences couldn\u2019t distinguish from the original \u2014 that he co-founded his own AI dubbing company, AI Samhitha.<\/p>\n
The implications reach well beyond the livelihoods of those who work in recording booths. India\u2019s film industry has always been defined by its linguistic geography \u2014 separate star systems, separate audiences, separate power bases, each sustained by the natural barrier of language. Pan-India releases were already a growing trend before AI; now, with the technology capable of producing day-and-date multilingual releases that are virtually seamless, that trend could become the default. What this means for regional industries, regional fandoms, and the actors whose stardom was forged within a single linguistic market remains deeply uncertain \u2014 but the disruption is likely to be profound. And it carries global implications: if AI dubbing can unify India\u2019s fragmented linguistic marketplace, the technology will likely do the same for international entertainment, accelerating a future already coming into focus on Netflix, where language is no longer a barrier to seamless content consumption anywhere. No more subtitles or overdubs, just digitally altered face movements with synthetic speech in the international actor\u2019s own voice \u2014 and content from everywhere effectively competing on the same linguistic plane.\u00a0<\/p>\n
India\u2019s\u00a0legal framework is struggling to keep pace. The Screenwriters Association of India has flagged the use of copyrighted material to train AI models without consent or compensation. A lawsuit currently before the Delhi High Court sees news agency ANI suing OpenAI for alleged copyright infringement \u2014 with the music industry filing an intervention, arguing that its work may have been used to train these systems too. Khimani warns that clarity may only come after expensive litigation. \u201cThe learning curve in India may come after someone realizes: \u2018Oops! This required a license.’\u201d<\/p>\n
Amid the ferment, a growing number of voices argue that the only viable path forward is coexistence.
Producer Danish Devgn, who launched the technology-forward production studio Lens Vault Studios\u2019 with Bollywood star Ajay Devgn, says his team is using generative AI primarily during early development \u2014 for concept art, environments, character design and battle sequences \u2014 while remaining mindful of the originality debate.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt LVS, we approach AI as a tool within a responsible creative framework. The ideas, narratives, characters and direction always originate from our writers, filmmakers and designers,\u201d Devgn says. \u201cAI assists the creative process; it doesn\u2019t replicate someone else\u2019s work. But as the technology evolves, the industry will need clearer standards around training data, attribution and licensing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tLens Vault Studios\u2019 Bal Tanhaji is a prequel to the 2020 hit Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy<\/p>\n
\n\tThe studio is currently developing several projects across formats, including episodic series, digital-first short-form universes and feature-length narratives \u2014 including Bal Tanhaji, a prequel to 2020 hit theatrical epic Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior, starring Ajay Devgn \u2014 all made by its in-house generative AI division Prismix Studios.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe key thing is AI is amplifying filmmakers, not replacing them,\u201d Devgn adds. \u201cAI simply gives us a much bigger creative playground at the earliest stages of filmmaking.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the responsible-use framework has its skeptics \u2014 and some of them are among India\u2019s most respected filmmakers.<\/p>\n
Acclaimed director Anurag Kashyap (Gangs of Wasseypur, Dev.D) has been at the forefront of experimentation in Indian cinema for over two decades, but he\u2019s one of many high-profile local industry figures who have expressed strong reservations about the use of AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMy issue with AI is that it comes at a cost. It takes away, for me, a lot of things creatively,\u201d he says. \u201cIt has an environmental cost and a human cost \u2014 and that always stays in my mind, and I cannot ignore it \u2026 To make a film, you don\u2019t need all these things. All you need is a camera \u2014 and that\u2019s way more inspiring for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the\u00a0Raanjhanaa\u00a0incident, Rai wrote to the Producers Guild of India and the Indian Film and Television Directors\u2019 Association urging that directors\u2019 contracts include a clause requiring filmmakers\u2019 consent before any future changes to their work. Despite finding themselves on opposite sides of that particular battle, both Rai and Dwivedi agree on one thing. \u201cUltimately, we believe the future of cinema will be shaped by those who use AI responsibly \u2014 with transparency, respect for creators, and a deep commitment to preserving the cultural integrity of storytelling,\u201d Dwivedi says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rai, who used AI himself for pre-visualization on his most recent film, puts it plainly: \u201cIf it is used in the right direction, it can be beneficial \u2014 otherwise it\u2019s destructive. It all depends on how good we are as students. My fraternity [of filmmakers] is a good learner, so we will be able to explore more across genres and expand the possibilities of storytelling with AI.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAs of now, India is becoming something nearly unprecedented in the history of the moving image: a vast, live experiment in what happens when one of the world\u2019s most prolific film industries deploys the most disruptive technology since the advent of television, or the transition from celluloid to digital \u2014 with no unions to slow the collision and scant regulation to help with the aftermath. The results, for better and worse, might offer the rest of the global entertainment industry a preview of its own future: what is gained and what is lost when an art form built on human creativity and collaborative craft is supplanted by the output of machines.<\/p>\n
\n\tThis story appears in The Hollywood Reporter\u2019s AI Issue. Click here to read more.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Picture the climactic ending of James Cameron\u2019s\u00a0Titanic: Kate Winslet as Rose, promising to \u201cnever let go\u201d as Leonardo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,262,25,3253,1415,898],"class_list":{"0":"post-24247","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-ai-digital-issue","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-film","12":"tag-india","13":"tag-international"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}