Actor Emraan Hashmi emphasized that people in the Bollywood world need to collaborate with new talent and keep themselves updated with new modes of storytelling in order to stay relevant in a fast-changing industry.
"Nostalgia is cozy, but for being relevant, there has to be reinvention," he urged, asking actors to take the young creatives under their wing but also hear them out. Hashmi, who has recently transitioned to off-beat roles in movies like Tiger 3 and web series Showtime on Netflix, spoke about how Gen Z makers and streaming services are rewriting narratives centred around imperfect heroes and social causes.
He cited co-productions with indie filmmakers and inter-industry co-productions as the indicators of sustainability, naming examples like making movies with debutante directors onedish scripts. "The audience's taste has changed—now, reality triumphs over formula," Hashmi asserted, advising others not to sacrifice artistic conscience in the race for data readings and social media trends.
His remedy is Bollywood's own shift towards content-driven cinema and tracking demographics to trend along, the youth audience controlling the viewership charts.
Hashmi’s own career revival—from early 2000s "serial kisser" tropes to nuanced roles in Why Cheat India and Ezra—reflects his mantra of "creative agility." He concluded, "Staying in the game means respecting the past but writing your future with new ink."
