Inside Junglee Pictures’ New Playbook: Story-First Greenlights, Disciplined Budgets and Healthier Bets in Bollywood

To sit inside the Mumbai office of Amrita Pandey, Chief Executive Officer of Junglee Pictures, is to witness the restless heartbeat of Indian cinema in real time. Her expansive glass cabin window offers a direct view of a multiplex, where ticket counters churn, crowds gather, and posters flicker in constant rotation.

For Pandey, who has previously worked with UTV Motion Pictures and The Walt Disney Company, this front-row seat to the box office serves as a daily, visual reminder of how fleeting audience attention has become, and how fierce the battle for a theatergoer’s time truly is.

"Beyond that, it’s a daily reminder of what we should be doing, and it inspires you because you realise what you’re competing against...that view constantly forces us to ask: how do we identify what people want, and how do we do better what we want to do."

In an interview with THR India, the acclaimed producer talks about her latest, the Kareena Kapoor Khan and Prithviraj-led Daayra, breaks down the current state of the industry, and talks about the nuts and bolts of the ecosystem.

Edited excerpts:

From a studio perspective at Junglee Pictures, what gets you invested in a project today, and how have your key evaluation criteria evolved post-pandemic?

In the past couple of years, post-COVID, movie recovery in India has been gradual compared to international markets like the US. The audience has become much more discerning. The opportunity is still very large, but you have to give people a compelling reason to leave their homes and buy a ticket. It became very clear to us that the core questions we ask when evaluating a pitch or developing a slate have fundamentally shifted. Earlier, when hearing an internal development pitch, the immediate question was often, "What cast can we get?" We don’t ask that anymore, or at least, it’s no longer the primary driver.

Star power is no longer the sole element drawing audiences to theatres. We want the right actor to amplify a strong proposition. What has become critical is the emotional anchor of the story. If a film has a strong emotional hook and the filmmaker has the right instincts to tell that story for a specific demographic, you have a viable theatrical project. For us, it’s about checking three boxes: a strong story, a clear emotional connect, and a subject with audience familiarity often inspired by real events that can spark broader cultural conversations, or any recognisable and marketable IP that justifies a theatrical experience.

You mention scale versus emotional connection. Does the audience still demand massive budgets to step into a theater?

There are a lot of films being made at massive scales of ₹300 crore to ₹400 crore, or more. But I don't think the audience is simply demanding that we give them a "big film." Instead, they are consistently telling us, "Give me a film I can feel something for."

Look at films like 12th Fail or Main Vaapas Aaunga, and you feel intensely for the protagonist’s journey, even if you’ve never attempted those specific competitive exams or relate to the deep love story set in the times of Partition. But that emotional resonance crosses into your heart. When audiences look at a trailer today, they need to know immediately what emotional response is being offered: is it inspiration, fear, love, loss, or rooting for the underdog? Identifying that specific emotional proposition is our priority.

And Daayra sits there…

It absolutely does. Look at the powerful story and the talent associated with the film. From Meghna and Kareena to Prithvi. Everyone came on board for the love of the story, of what they wanted to tell and talk about as artists. Even for us, much before the cast was assembled, we knew we had to greenlight this film because of its story and what it says. The encouraging part is also the long tail films can have today, not just in theatres but also in streaming viewing, like in the case of Haq where the film really exploded post theatrical on its streaming release too. 

Post-COVID, there were major concerns about shrinking streaming revenues dictating theatrical greenlights. Is the current market more stable, or is it still volatile?

The Hindi industry is producing significantly fewer films overall today. If you track announcements across the board, greenlighting has become far more selective and disciplined.

The market is more stable in terms of discipline, but it remains highly unpredictable because there is no single working formula. Additionally, aligning the four key stakeholders — the producer, director, actor, and audience — on the exact same vision, has become far more complex. Everyone is trying to gauge what will work next.

Because safety nets like guaranteed pre-sales or easy streaming covers are reduced, we have to make more unconventional choices. That lack of a safety net is actually forcing healthier bets across the ecosystem. If you don't take unconventional creative risks, you miss out on disproportionate theatrical success.

So how has financial evaluation changed internally when approving and finalising a budget?

There is a subtle but critical shift in how we approach film economics. A traditional studio setup years ago would look at a script and ask, "How much will this cost?" Today, the question we ask is, "How much should we spend on this film?"

We look backwards from the realistic audience potential of a film in theatres. It requires financial discipline. You can no longer assume that attaching a certain name guarantees a baseline box office recovery. Every film has to be budgeted to its specific concept and audience demographic scale. 

How are deal structures with talent evolving when trying to keep production budgets controlled?

Talent and their teams are far more open to structured, performance-linked conversations today. The priority for any sensible production is ensuring that the production capital ends up on the screen.

To achieve that without inflating the upfront cost, there are multiple backend mechanisms whether that’s profit participation, box-office milestone bonuses (triggered when a film hits defined net benchmarks based on cost), or non-theatrical recovery triggers. Actors recognise the current market dynamics and are increasingly willing to align upfront fees with sensible production economics.

There is always a debate in the trade that Hindi cinema often focuses primarily on urban multiplexes rather than reaching Tier-2 and Tier-3 audiences. Is that a fair assessment?

I don't entirely agree with the narrative that filmmakers today are making movies only for high-brow urban multiplexes. If anything, the industry has swung in the opposite direction in recent years.

There was a period in the mid-2000s where edgy, high-brow, smaller city cinema found a massive, distinct multiplex audience. But today, almost every filmmaker is acutely aware of the need to resonate with a broader mass audience. Whether through broad comedies, mass action, or high-concept drama, directors across the board are actively trying to build wide, mass-market appeal into their stories.

How is Junglee Pictures balancing its upcoming slate between high-concept cinema and larger commercial bets?

We view our slate across a complete spectrum. We are staying true to our core identity of high-concept, story-driven films with strong emotional hooks, but we are also expanding into larger-scale films and working with filmmakers who speak directly to wide commercial audiences. We aren't restricting ourselves by asking, "What genre should we make?" Instead, we evaluate the distinct audience proposition of each script, ensuring the core narrative spine remains fresh, relatable, and emotionally grounded. We are taking fewer sharper bets. 

We also don’t want to build a slate that is dependent on stars. We want to build a slate with a story that creates the value, and then the actor multiplies it.