One could say that the 2000s were the golden age for children’s films in India.
For the bulk of the Indian audience, films like Taare Zameen Par, Tara Rum Pum (2007), Bhootnath (2008), Chillar Party (2011), and Stanley Ka Dabba (2011) — you only need to have watched one or two to get the gist — immediately transport us to an era of Indian cinema when simple yet fulfilling stories were allowed to exist on theater screens, not only because the audience deemed them worthy of their time, but also because the industry considered children as an audience worthy of making movies for.
In the span of just a decade or two, children's films seem to have been pushed into somewhat of a vacuum. And the fact that we must reach back in time to recall notable work in this genre, is evidence enough.
While the shrinking market for children's films involves several actors, including filmmakers, producers, consumers, and institutions, it seems to stem from a simple misunderstanding.
'Childishness' Or 'Childhood'?
Best explained by veteran filmmaker Amole Gupte; children's stories often “get mixed up with ‘bachkana’ (childishness) instead of ‘bachpana’ (childhood)’. It dumbs it down as if adults feel children don’t understand anything," forcing us to realise just how profoundly a parent's views on the same can alter the link between and children and cinema, because they, as film editor and writer Deepa Bhatia explains, are the ones that “don’t have a voice.”
“I sense that the personality of the way we consume theaters is changing,” says Bhatia, pointing to how children between the ages of seven to twelve — the intended target audience of children’s films — are often left out. She believes that earlier, when trailers used to release on the screens, you could sense a certain willingness from children to go to the movies because theaters were one of the only few available sources of entertainment.
Now, with overwhelming access to entertainment through social media, this willingness has reduced. A child’s excitement to witness stories beyond their device has reduced.
The Movie Theater: A Gamble Most Would Rather Skip
Bhatia recalls that while researching for a project that involved speaking to a large pool of kids aged six to nine, all hailing from urban middle-class families, she discovered that many of them had never even been inside a theater.
“The pandemic period has recalibrated the entire world of entertainment,” Gupte believes. People have become more comfortable watching moves within the comfort of their home and feel that theaters no longer have much to offer except for expensive tickets and snacks that are beyond the reach of a middle-class person. “You're not allowed to take your food and your water in. I mean... this is anarchy,” he adds.
Siding with comfort over an economically unfavourable movie-watching experience, in an entertainment ecosystem that hardly births children’s film anyway, parents hardly feel the push to take their kids out for children’s films anymore. This also hints at the deeply transactional relationship most Indian audiences share with movie theaters. As Gupte puts it, they only want to pay for what is “worth the bang.”
“I will take my child to see a UA film which might have an objectionable item number. But I will not take my child to see a children's film made in India. I'll have a blast watching an Avengers movie with my child and feel that you really got worth the money,” he says, pointing that this way of thinking has become common among audiences today.
A Five-Year Wait For A Story Worth Telling
“Our industry has a tendency to follow. Somebody has to succeed for us to follow,” claims Bhatia, revealing that she was approached by many during the filming of Taare Zameen Par, warning her it would turn out too “niche” to succeed. But when the film released in 2007, that is exactly why everyone loved it.
Almost every audience-filled theater across the country wept for Ishaan Awasthi, the protagonist, an 8-year-old dyslexic boy who was forced into a boarding school where his hidden talent for painting transformed his grief into a new sense of self. The story touched millions, and made over ₹16 Cr in just a week.
The editor also recalls that the film released during a time when, “parents and teachers were not realising multiple intelligence as a concept, that a child doesn’t have to be academically good. He can have other gifts and talents and make a life out of it. The most important part was to understand that there is life beyond engineering, in India particularly.”
Whether or not the film became a box office hit, its crew had a simple motive: to tell a well-researched story, based on a real societal issue, to an audience that was first and foremost, children. "We go to schools, we go to parents, we try to understand what’s going on. If you’re aware of these issues, you’ll know the success of films based on these issues," says Bhatia.
Taare Zameen Par took about five years to get off the ground. “It’s a very long road. You need to be driven to say these stories, to want your films to be a chronicle at the time so somebody looks back at them like books and archives,” she says.
Part Director, Part Parent: The Practical Aspects of Children’s Films
Working with a child on set demands its own set of responsibilities. It is, to a considerable extent, different from filming with a seasoned actor. Manish Saini, who wrote, directed, and produced The Great Grand Superhero: Aliens Ka Aagman (2026), starring Jackie Shroff, compares the duties of a director to that of a parent.
“As a producer, you want to be involved in the film to make sure everything runs smoothly. It’s almost as though you are the parent of the kid, whether it be managing them on set or ensuring they have eaten.”
"The practical challenges begin before you even write the script. You have to check with the school whether they [child actors] will be allowed to skip it,” he adds, explaining that the challenge also extents to parents having to be present on set during the filming process.
As it happens, child actors are held to different expectations too. According to the director, you can’t expect children to sustain the same energy throughout the shoot as you would an older actor. “I've tried, a couple of times, to get the child to act for two more minutes. But I can see it on screen that they aren’t able to perform.”
These nuances also seep into the use of special effects, such as fake smoke, which you cannot execute on set while working with kids, Saini adds.
He believes that since the pandemic, the cost of making a children’s film, especially a sci-fi children’s film like The Great Grand Superhero, have increased. “There's always pressure from the production studio around viability. I could ask for ₹5 crore for VFX, but they'll say it's not viable. It's a children's film; how will you recover that? So, the first instinct is always to make the film on as low a budget as possible."
“As a filmmaker who wants his films to reach as many people as possible, you have to detach yourself from the sentiments of it. You know within a week whether it's working or not. You can't cry about your film not reaching theaters. You have to plan. How do you reach the audience smartly? Which cities do you release in? Which theaters do you target?,” says Saini, claiming this can be easier to tackle when your film features a known actor.
Gupte's experience directing films like Stanley Ka Dabba (2011) and Hawaa Hawaai (2014), that did not cast a renowned actor in a lead role, is a testimony to this. “I took the first prints to the principals of Indian schools across the country, and requested them to support it," he recalls, adding that when he served as the chairperson of the Children’s Film Society India from 2012 to 2015, he discovered that there was no channel to distribute and make children’s films economically viable. “It's an uphill task."
Nobody Wants To Go First
Film exhibitor Vishek Chauhan says, “There is no precedent set,” explaining that unless there is blockbuster in the children’s film genre, there will be no push for filmmakers to invest their time in making one.
“In the commercial cinema landscape, people are very risk averse. They want to do safe films that are doing well at the box-office such as horror comedies, love stories, and actions films," he says. While there are a few children’s films in theaters, they are probably made with an insufficient budget or weak storytelling skills that do not appeal to the psyche of today’s generation of children. “That is why they [children’s films] haven’t been able to deliver the kind of numbers they’re [filmmakers] expecting them to.”
Where our film industry falls short, though, is not only in appealing to the Indian psyche, but worst of all, in filmmakers doubting their own product. Chauhan believes that marketing plays a colossal role in a film's success. Filmmakers must appeal to children and their schools by prompting them to watch the film and target prominent names in the industry to back that kind of cinema too.
“An effort needs to be made in that direction. Half-hearted films are being made, and half-hearted marketing pushes are being done. People are not convinced. If you’re not convinced about your own product, why would I buy it?,” he questions.
Today, the Indian film industry is fertile soil for films drenched in horror-comedy, riveting romance, and high-octane action that scream scalable and, more often than not, remain a sure bet with the audience. “But, if you look the best shows in the world,” says Bhatia, “.. they are all slow burns. Look at Adolescence (2025). It was the best thing Netflix did last year.”
The Industry Can Decide What Gets Made, Not Who Needs It
The problem lies in the industry acting on the latter too, which often hands it a green light to avoid creating children's films though there is evident potential. “There [the children’s film genre] is a huge, huge market. I refuse to believe that it doesn’t exist. You’re just not being able to tap into it,” claims Chauhan.
“There is so much to gain from taking a child to a cinema hall,” says Bhatia. And it’s true. In a country of over 1.4 billion people, it is difficult to believe that children cannot be considered a legitimate theatergoing, film-loving audience that simply need good cinema just as much as the older generations do.
But, with the audience fed a steady diet of familiar films, producers rejecting those without the safety net of a known name, institutions still unaware of their role in this cycle, and a director’s next film hanging at the crux of it all, today, we find ourselves midst an entertainment ecosystem that is slowly starving itself of a genre.
Or, as Bhatia puts it, “Good cinema feeds the soul. How do we not think it’s important to feed the soul of a child? For me, it’s a health crisis.”