Bollywood wants every film to be a cinematic universe now

Stay for the post-credits scene

There was a time when a Hindi film ended and the audience went home. The hero won, the villain lost, the couple danced in Switzerland, and the credits rolled while everyone looked for their slippers. Today, leaving before the credits finish is a risk. You might miss a cameo. You might miss a hint. You might miss a tiger walking into a room full of spies. Bollywood has entered its cinematic universe era, and every film now wants to be the beginning of something larger than itself.

To be fair, the idea was not invented in Mumbai. Hollywood spent much of the last two decades proving that audiences will turn up for interconnected films if the characters are fun and the cameos are timed well. Hindi cinema has taken that blueprint and given it its own accent: more songs, more slow motion, and considerably more dialogue about the motherland.

Three universes and a lot of shared screen time

The best-known example is the YRF Spy Universe. It began, in hindsight, with Ek Tha Tiger in 2012, carried on with Tiger Zinda Hai in 2017 and then added War in 2019. The universe announced itself loudly with Pathaan in 2023, in which Salman Khan's Tiger turned up to help Shah Rukh Khan's Pathaan, much to the delight of every audience member who had ever wanted to see the two of them share a fight scene. Tiger 3 returned the favour later that year, and War 2 arrived in 2025. If you are keeping score, that is a lot of agents, a lot of trains and a remarkable number of people jumping off things.

Then there is Rohit Shetty's cop universe, which runs on a simpler philosophy: if one police officer flipping a car is good, several police officers flipping several cars is better. Singham arrived in 2011, followed by Singham Returns, Simmba, Sooryavanshi and Singham Again in 2024. The films are not subtle and do not try to be. Their shared universe is less a careful mythology and more a group chat of heroes who all agree that vehicles are decorative.

The surprise success story is the horror-comedy universe from Maddock Films. Stree in 2018 was a small, clever film about a ghost who abducts men in the town of Chanderi. It was followed by Bhediya in 2022, Munjya in 2024 and Stree 2 in 2024, which became one of the biggest Hindi hits of that year. Thamma joined the family in 2025. What makes this universe work is that it grew from a genuinely original first film rather than from a business plan.

Why everyone wants one

From a producer's point of view, a universe is irresistible. It turns one hit into a franchise, one star into a recurring character and one release into a long-term event. Cameos generate headlines. Teasers generate theories. Every post-credits scene becomes free marketing for the next film. In an industry where audiences increasingly have to be persuaded to leave their sofas and streaming apps, the promise of a shared event is a powerful hook.

Audiences enjoy it too, for the most part. There is real pleasure in recognising a character, spotting a reference or hearing a theme music cue a split second before a familiar face walks in. Cinema halls erupting at a surprise cameo are one of the great communal joys of moviegoing, and Hindi cinema does crowd reactions better than almost anyone.

The cost of never ending

Here is the gentle roast. Not every film needs to set up three more films. A story that knows it has a sequel coming can sometimes forget to finish itself. Climaxes become trailers. Characters stop growing because they need to stay exactly the same for the next instalment. And when every universe starts teasing crossovers with every other universe, the audience may need a whiteboard, a timeline and possibly a therapist to keep up.

There is also the question of what gets squeezed out. Studios have limited money and screens. If the biggest budgets go to universe-building, smaller and stranger films, the kind that might one day become the next Stree, can struggle for space. The irony is that the most successful universe on this list started exactly like that: small, specific and confident enough to be weird.

The takeaway

Bollywood's universe era is fun, loud and occasionally exhausting, which is a fair description of Bollywood in general. The best shared worlds work because the first film was good on its own, not because a spreadsheet demanded a franchise. If producers remember that, the cameos will keep landing. If they forget, we may soon get a romantic comedy that ends with a post-credits scene revealing the heroine is secretly a spy who also fights ghosts. Honestly, we would watch it. We would just like to go home first.