One Hit, Endless Imitations: 15 Films That Started Bollywood’s Biggest Trends
As Kareena Kapoor questions Bollywood’s obsession with formulas, we revisit 15 trendsetting films that sent the industry racing to recreate their magic.
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The film industry loves originality – right up until originality earns a fortune. Then the supposedly unrepeatable idea suddenly acquires a dress code, a soundtrack, three release dates and a queue of producers asking for “the same thing, but bigger”. One hit can change Hindi cinema’s vocabulary; one enormous hit can make everybody speak it until audiences beg for a new language. That is why Kareena Kapoor’s latest swipe at Bollywood has landed so neatly. During a Yuvaa town-hall conversation, the Bollywood actress argued that audiences are smarter than filmmakers sometimes assume and criticised the industry’s dependence on formulas.
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Using her cousin Ranbir Kapoor’s blockbuster ‘Animal’ as the freshest example, she joked, “Animal has worked, so now they are like: ‘chalo sab violence kar lete hai’.” Her larger point was not that filmmakers must ignore successful ideas, but that inspiration too easily turns into what she called a “herd mentality”.
Kareena may have been talking about the present, but Bollywood has been following the leader for decades. The leader simply keeps changing: sometimes he is an angry cop, sometimes a leather-jacketed thief, and sometimes an NRI who will cross continents but absolutely will not elope without Bauji’s permission. Here are 15 films whose success did not merely fill theatres – it sent the rest of the industry shopping for the same formula.
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1. Zanjeer
Before ‘Zanjeer’, Hindi heroes sang, romanced and generally found time to smile. Inspector Vijay Khanna was in no such mood. Prakash Mehra’s action drama, released on 11 May 1973, starred Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bhaduri, Pran, Ajit and Bindu. Its hard-edged story of an upright policeman pursuing the criminal linked to his childhood trauma earned an estimated Rs 6 crore worldwide – a huge return for its period.
More importantly, ‘Zanjeer’ crystallised the “angry young man”: a hero furious with corruption, institutions and the polite idea that change could wait until after intermission. ‘Deewaar’, ‘Trishul’, ‘Kaala Patthar’ and ‘Shakti’ developed different versions of that rage, while an entire generation of writers discovered that unemployment and disillusionment could be converted into whistles.
2. Sholay
Ramesh Sippy’s ‘Sholay’ released on 15 August 1975 with Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjeev Kumar, Hema Malini, Jaya Bhaduri and Amjad Khan leading one of Hindi cinema’s most famous ensembles. Two small-time criminals hired by a retired police officer to capture a bandit became the centre of a film containing friendship, romance, comedy, revenge, tragedy and a villain who permanently altered the country’s supply of memorable one-liners. Sacnilk estimated its worldwide gross at approximately Rs 50 crore.
The film fused the Western, the dacoit drama and the multi-star masala entertainer so successfully that producers spent years chasing its dust. ‘Ganga Ki Saugandh’ and ‘Dacait’ belonged to the dacoit-heavy wave, ‘Shaan’ reunited Sippy and writers Salim-Javed for another outsized ensemble adventure, and ‘China Gate’ arrived much later as an unmistakable homage. Many borrowed the village, the gang or the flamboyant villain; almost nobody reproduced the balance.
3. Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak
Released on 29 April 1988, Mansoor Khan’s ‘Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak’ starred Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla, with Dalip Tahil and Alok Nath in key roles. Its lovers came from feuding families, its songs travelled everywhere, and its ending refused to provide the comforting reward Hindi romances generally owed their audience. Bollywood Hungama listed its India collection at Rs 3 crore and classified it as a hit.
The film helped pull the industry away from an action-saturated decade and made youthful, music-led romance bankable again. The rush that followed included ‘Love Love Love’, ‘Maine Pyar Kiya’, ‘Aashiqui’, ‘Dil’ and ‘Saajan’ – not carbon copies, but members of an unmistakable wave in which fresh-faced lovers, bestselling albums and parental opposition once again ruled the marquee.
4. Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!
Sooraj Barjatya’s ‘Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!’ arrived on 5 August 1994 and turned a family wedding into a three-hour national celebration. Salman Khan and Madhuri Dixit led a cast that included Mohnish Bahl, Renuka Shahane, Anupam Kher and Reema Lagoo. Made before “Rs 100 crore club” became everyday trade vocabulary, it grossed an estimated Rs 128 crore worldwide and became the highest-grossing Indian film of its time.
After years dominated by revenge and violence, Sooraj Barjatya demonstrated that a lost shoe, a cricket match and fourteen songs could generate action of their own. ‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’, ‘Pardes’, ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’, ‘Hum Saath-Saath Hain’ and ‘Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham’ carried forward different parts of its glossy family-first grammar. It also altered real weddings: songs, games, costumes and choreographed celebrations moved freely from screen to mandap.
5. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge
Aditya Chopra’s directorial debut ‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’ released on 20 October 1995. Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol, Amrish Puri, Farida Jalal and Anupam Kher starred in the story of Raj and Simran, two young British Indians who fall in love in Europe but must win over a deeply traditional family in Punjab. The film grossed approximately Rs 89.61 crore worldwide and became an all-time blockbuster.
If ‘Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!’ made family approval fashionable, ‘DDLJ’ gave that formula a passport. Its hero drank beer and flirted abroad, yet understood that the climax required Bauji’s consent rather than a secret wedding. ‘Pardes’, ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’, ‘Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham’, ‘Kal Ho Naa Ho’ and ‘Namastey London’ all operated, in very different ways, within the lucrative world of affluent diaspora romance, foreign scenery and Indian values.
6. Satya
Ram Gopal Varma’s ‘Satya’, released on 3 July 1998, featured J.D. Chakravarthy, Urmila Matondkar, Manoj Bajpayee, Saurabh Shukla, Aditya Srivastava and Paresh Rawal. Its criminals lived in cramped flats, spoke like people overheard on Mumbai streets and died without waiting for a heroic background score. The film collected approximately Rs 14.35 crore net in India and Rs 20.05 crore worldwide.
This was no formal all-time blockbuster, but few 1990s successes changed Hindi filmmaking more. Satya helped establish “Mumbai noir” and opened space for ‘Vaastav’, ‘Company’, ‘D,’ ‘Black Friday’ and later underworld dramas that preferred grime, police files and street-level ambition to velvet-jacketed smugglers. It also proved that actors who did not arrive packaged as conventional heroes could seize the whole film.
7. Dil Chahta Hai
Farhan Akhtar’s ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ hit cinemas on 10 August 2001 with Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Akshaye Khanna, Preity Zinta, Dimple Kapadia and Sonali Kulkarni. Bollywood Hungama placed its worldwide gross at approximately Rs 34.28 crore. Its urban performance was much stronger than its reception in several smaller centres, but the film’s influence soon made that modest verdict look almost comic.
Akash, Sameer and Sid did not deliver speeches about friendship; they teased, sulked, drifted apart and returned to one another. The conversational dialogues, Goa road trip, contemporary styling and emotionally confused young adults provided a new blueprint for urban Hindi cinema. ‘Rock On!!’, ‘Wake Up Sid’, ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’ and ‘Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani’ were not replicas, but they inherited its aspirational friendship-and-self-discovery grammar. The post-Dil Chahta Hai starter pack was simple: three friends, one trip and enough unresolved feelings to fill the car.
8. Dhoom
Sanjay Gadhvi’s ‘Dhoom’ released on 27 August 2004, starring Abhishek Bachchan, John Abraham, Uday Chopra, Esha Deol and Rimi Sen. Its plot was essentially cops versus motorcycle thieves, but Yash Raj Films wrapped that chase in imported-bike glamour, music-video cool and a villain more magnetic than most heroes. The film earned approximately Rs 47.70 crore worldwide.
Its biggest innovation was commercial rather than philosophical: make the antagonist the franchise’s rotating superstar and sell each installment as a sleeker upgrade. ‘Dhoom 2’ and ‘Dhoom 3’ supersized that model with Hrithik Roshan and Aamir Khan, while films such as ‘Race’, ‘Players’ and ‘Bang Bang!’ embraced varying combinations of glossy locations, beautiful criminals, gadgets and expensive chases.
9. Ghajini
Released on 25 December 2008, A.R. Murugadoss’s ‘Ghajini’ starred Aamir Khan, Asin, Jiah Khan and Pradeep Rawat. A Hindi remake of Murugadoss’s 2005 Tamil film, it combined revenge melodrama, romance and brutal action, with Aamir’s heavily muscled transformation becoming a marketing campaign by itself. The film collected approximately Rs 114 crore net in India and Rs 189.19 crore worldwide.
It became the first Hindi film widely credited with crossing Rs 100 crore net domestically, turning that round number into an industry obsession. It also strengthened the rush towards remaking South Indian mass entertainers: ‘Wanted’, ‘Ready’, ‘Bodyguard’, ‘Singham’ and ‘Rowdy Rathore’ followed with stars, punchlines and physics operating at maximum volume. Not every later remake existed because of Ghajini, of course, but its success removed any remaining hesitation.
10. Dabangg
Abhinav Kashyap’s ‘Dabangg’ opened on 10 September 2010 and introduced Salman Khan’s Chulbul Pandey, a corrupt-but-lovable Uttar Pradesh policeman who wore his sunglasses on the back of his collar because ordinary storage was apparently too dull. Sonakshi Sinha, Arbaaz Khan, Sonu Sood, Vinod Khanna and Dimple Kapadia completed the main cast. It grossed approximately Rs 221.14 crore worldwide.
The film did not invent the mass-market cop, but it repackaged him with heartland flavour, comic arrogance, family melodrama and enough catchphrases to stock a police station. Its own sequels came first, while ‘Singham’, ‘Rowdy Rathore’, ‘Khiladi 786’ and eventually ‘Simmba’ rode the larger wave of swaggering lawmen, rustic action and heroes whose entrances required emergency crowd control.
11. Vicky Donor
Shoojit Sircar’s ‘Vicky Donor’ released on 20 April 2012 with debutants Ayushmann Khurrana and Yami Gautam, alongside Annu Kapoor and Dolly Ahluwalia. A romantic comedy about spe*m donation sounded like the kind of pitch designed to end a studio meeting quickly. Instead, the film treated its provocative subject with wit and warmth and grossed approximately Rs 55.97 crore worldwide.
Its success helped make the modestly budgeted, taboo-topic social comedy one of Hindi cinema’s safest “unsafe” bets. ‘Shubh Mangal Saavdhan’, ‘Badhaai Ho’, ‘Bala’, ‘Dream Girl’, ‘Helmet’ and ‘Janhit Mein Jaari’ later built accessible entertainment around erectile dysfunction, late pregnancy, premature balding, se**al fantasy, contraception and other subjects once whispered rather than advertised. Ayushmann became the face of the genre, and every new script appeared to ask the same question: which awkward family conversation has Bollywood not yet converted into a Friday release?
12. Baahubali 2
The one deliberate non-Hindi original on this list is here because Bollywood could not ignore what happened in its own market. SS Rajamouli’s Telugu epic ‘Baahubali 2: The Conclusion’ released on 28 April 2017 in Telugu and Tamil, with dubbed Hindi and Malayalam versions. Prabhas, Rana Daggubati, Anushka Shetty, Ramya Krishnan, Sathyaraj and Tamannaah Bhatia led the cast. Sacnilk estimated its worldwide gross at approximately Rs 1,788.06 crore.
The ‘Baahubali’ films proved that a spectacle conceived beyond Bollywood could be marketed across India as one national event, with dubbing replacing remaking and scale overpowering language barriers. ‘KGF’, ‘Saaho’, ‘Pushpa’, ‘RRR’ and later event films adopted the multilingual roll-out, while Hindi productions such as ‘Brahmastra’ and ‘Adipurush’ chased comparable scale and cross-regional reach.
13. Stree
Amar Kaushik’s ‘Stree’ released on 31 August 2018 with Rajkummar Rao, Shraddha Kapoor, Pankaj Tripathi, Aparshakti Khurana and Abhishek Banerjee. Based around the legend of a female spirit who abducts men in the town of Chanderi, the film mixed scares, small-town comedy and a sly reversal of familiar gendered fear. It collected approximately Rs 129.90 crore net in India and Rs 180.76 crore worldwide.
Horror-comedy existed before ‘Stree’, but this film made Indian folklore look like a renewable mainstream resource – and then turned it into a connected business. ‘Roohi’, ‘Bhediya’, Munjya’, ‘Stree 2’ and ‘Thamma’ expanded Maddock’s supernatural universe, while the broader market welcomed more comic hauntings through films such as ‘Phone Bhoot’, ‘Kakuda’ and the renewed ‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa’ franchise.
14. The Kashmir Files
Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri’s ‘The Kashmir Files’ released on 11 March 2022, starring Anupam Kher, Mithun Chakraborty, Darshan Kumaar and Pallavi Joshi. The drama centred on the 1990 exodus and killings of Kashmiri Pandits and inspired fiercely divided responses: supporters praised it for foregrounding trauma they felt had been ignored, while critics challenged its politics and presentation. Commercially, however, its rise from a relatively limited opening to approximately Rs 252.90 crore net in India and Rs 340.92 crore worldwide was undeniable.
Its success encouraged a wave of low-to-mid-budget, issue-led films marketed as revealing hidden or suppressed truths. ‘The Kerala Story’ became the next major hit, while ‘The Vaccine War,’ ‘Bastar: The Naxal Story’, ‘Article 370’ and ‘The Bengal Files’ occupied adjacent territory with very different results. Mint later reported trade concerns about “overkill” as producers tried to cash in on nationalist and politically charged subjects. This is the most polarising trend on the list.
15. Animal
And so, we return to Kareena Kapoor’s chosen example. Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s ‘Animal’ opened on 1 December 2023 and starred Ranbir Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Bobby Deol, Rashmika Mandanna and Triptii Dimri. Its story fused a son’s obsession with his emotionally distant father, family succession drama, romance and extreme violence into an adult-rated spectacle. The film grossed approximately Rs 915 crore worldwide, despite sharp debate over its gender politics and brutality.
Its box office emboldened the market for bloodier action, darker male antiheroes and movies that sell aggression as an event. Later releases such as ‘Marco’, ‘Baaghi 4’, ‘Dhurandhar’ and ‘Toxic’ belonged to that broader surge in hard-edged violence, although overlapping production timelines mean it would be inaccurate to declare every one a direct ‘Animal’ imitation. Kareena’s joke works because it captures the industry’s perception rather than proving a family tree: once Rs 900 crore entered the conversation, blood-spattered posters began looking less like a risk and more like a PowerPoint strategy. Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap had made a similar observation in 2025, arguing that the success of films such as ‘KGF’, ‘Salaar’ and ‘Animal’ encouraged the industry to use more gore.
