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Filmmaker Hansal Mehta sits in his new Bandra office in Mumbai, typing urgently into his phone. Around him is a blur of activity. Housed in one of those tile-roofed Indo-Portuguese bungalows in Ranwar Village, behind the famous Veronica’s cafe, True Story Films — Mehta’s new production company founded with producer Sahil Saigal — fits the standard description of a boutique studio. Inside, the vibe is all MacBooks and sneakers. “The oldest members of the team are in their early 30s,” Mehta, himself 57, in a white shirt and wide-legged jeans, tells The Hollywood Reporter India.
The filmmaker behind Shahid (2012) and Aligarh (2015) is now in what can be called his cool professor era: mentoring younger writers and filmmakers, producing a wide array of titles with an emphasis on genre. There is Dilkashi, a whimsical musical romance directed by Lijo Jose Pellissery in his Hindi debut. There is the slasher horror Mehfooz, and the big-budget post-apocalyptic thriller Pralay directed by Mehta’s son Jai. He has his own directorial projects lined up: among them, the Gujarat-set smuggling drama Porbandar and an adaptation of Nilanjana S. Roy’s political mystery novel Black River. The latter has Saif Ali Khan attached to star in and co-produce. Gandhi, an expansive, multi-series series on life and times of the Mahatma, will stream later this year.
He’s also shooting a third season of Scam and hopes to slip in a smaller project — a remake of the Sri Lankan comedy Tentigo — somewhere in the midst. Outside of fiction, Mehta has returned to his culinary programming roots with Khana Dil Se, an AI-powered cooking series.
In an interview with THR India, Mehta spoke about empowering and investing in writers, his acceptance of AI and a futuristic anti-tobacco film he once pitched to Anurag Kashyap.
Edited excerpt from the interview.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER INDIA: You recently announced Khana Dil Se, an AI-powered food show. How is AI helping you create it?
HANSAL MEHTA: I have an entire website called hansalskitchen.com where I have published all my recipes for my friends and kids. The idea was to turn that database into an engaging video series. I send my recipes to the team at Galleri5 (an AI company owned by Vijay Subramaniam) that reimagines them visually with AI, while I guide the prompts.
Meanwhile, chef Shamsher Ahmed authenticates everything, testing recipes and quantities. That’s the whole point: AI can’t replace a director’s vision or a chef’s expertise. It’s powerful but limited. Human intervention is still essential.
THR INDIA: Do you use AI in daily work?
MEHTA: I actually love AI. I just tell Claude my calendar and it does a wonderful job of creating my reminders because I’m terrible at all that. I keep telling myself that now that you’re a producer, be a bit more organised. So, Claude organises my life and helps me with spreadsheets.
THR INDIA: But have you been tempted to take creative feedback from AI?
MEHTA: Of course, I have. Without sounding offensive, in our industry, AI and studio feedback are often similar (laughs). So, if you really want to train yourself for that feedback, go get an AI software first. I use it very liberally. There are times when I’m in a writer’s block and the script is not moving ahead; I ask AI for options and I try it on different models — like six different models on Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini — and all of them give me different ideas and new ways of looking at things.
THR INDIA: Ted Chiang, the science-fiction writer, wrote an article in The New Yorker arguing that 'art' is anything that requires making a lot of choices. And what AI is doing is that it is limiting the range of choices you can make.
MEHTA: We’re not doing that. When the team is working on the visuals, I actually specify my choices — I give detailed feedback like, ‘What if it’s on a Leica lens on a film camera using the following 28, 35, 53 blocks?’ I tell them, ‘Don’t go beyond that, don’t zoom, no shallow focus’. I tell them how the bananas or the sweet potatoes should be cut. So, there’s a visual language that I have set.
I’ve thought deeply about the ethics and even explained my reasoning to my kids, who keep me creatively and morally in check. AI doesn’t replace critical thinking. You still have to guide it, correct it, and step in constantly. But we need to keep an open mind. I’d never have returned to making a food show after Khana Khazana, were it not for AI.
THR INDIA: Among your other projects is the web series, Gandhi, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last September. Do you have a streaming partner for it yet?
MEHTA: We are still negotiating. The producers — Applause Entertainment — will announce it when it’s done. Currently, we have to complete the post-production on a couple of episodes. There’s a good amount of VFX work left and Mr. (AR) Rahman has to deliver the music.
THR INDIA: Was there a fact about Mahatma Gandhi’s life that took you by surprise?
MEHTA: The first season is set in London and then South Africa from 1888 to 1915. It’s all based on Ramchandra Guha’s book, Gandhi Before India. One of the interesting things about young Gandhi was that he was a huge fan of the British Empire initially. He thought that they were the best people. There was an inherent racism in him. It’s not the apartheid kind of racism, of course — but it slowly started surfacing and he recognised it over the years and for which perhaps he overcompensated sometimes.
THR INDIA: Though you have produced films before, you recently launched a production house with True Story Films. What is your driving philosophy behind it?
MEHTA: Yaar, I want to be the producer I never had. We have invested almost 50 per cent of our capital into developing screenplays. The biggest flaw with our industry is that they give a minimal amount to writers during development — it’s almost a joke. The real payment, they say, will come later, once a star or a studio is attached, depending on the budget.
I’ve never bargained with a writer over their fee. We pay them what’s fair, and we pay them upfront. Ditto for filmmakers. It takes time for a project to be sold and greenlit. We are making sure that, during that process, the filmmaker is looked after financially. There’s a substantial amount of money set apart for that. I’ve been through this time in my life, where I would get very frustrated and take up something else rather than the work I really wanted to do.
THR INDIA: Tell us about your upcoming projects.
MEHTA: We have Dilkashi which is a beautiful love story. It’s twisted and it’s very Lijo (Jose Pellissery). He and Karan (Vyas), the writer, have created this beautiful, zany world. Then there’s the action feature, Porbandar, a story that we’ve been working on for nearly three years. Mirat Trivedi and Karan (Vyas) are the writers. Karan gave me the basic storyline of the place, based on the ’70s gangster smugglers in the coastal city in Gujarat, from where we built our own fantasy action-adventure world. It’s a larger-than-life drama with a certain visual poetry to it, like Road to Perdition or Peaky Blinders.
THR INDIA: Is there a script you feel you could have developed a little more?
MEHTA: There are times when I feel that about The Buckingham Murders (2023). For me, it was a film about grief. It was not a murder mystery, but when you try to force-fit a murder mystery into it, it becomes half baked. For me, it was a film about grief and identity, the grief within communities that don’t belong. So, it became a mishmash of expectations and delivery. I still love the film because Kareena (Kapoor Khan) is absolutely beautiful in it. She made the film special. We successfully created the mood but somewhere it’s a bit confused about what it is and where it is going.
THR INDIA: Have you ever come close to directing something in the sci-fi space?
MEHTA: Around 10 or 12 years ago, I wrote a futuristic anti-tobacco film called Tambaku, inspired by my mother’s cancer while I was spending time in a chemo ward. My mother used to chew tobacco and it killed her, while I was a chain smoker. I imagined a future India where tobacco will be banned and cannabis will be legalised to replace it. I even pitched it to Anurag Kashyap, telling him to take it and add his own madness. He told me: ‘If you feel so strongly, make it yourself — and quit smoking’.
THR INDIA: And you did quit?
MEHTA: Yes, I stopped four years ago. Earlier I thought smoking was allowing me to remain focused; that having a cigarette in my hand was a stress buster. In truth, there’s no better stress buster than being fit during a shoot.