Big films, bigger stakes, biggest bets – Is that the way ahead for Bollywood? Well, seems like if one looks at some of the most awaited films of 2026. King, Ramayana, Welcome To The Jungle and Dhamaal 4 are unarguably some of the biggest releases of the year and what’s common between them is a multitude of stars who have come together to make them even bigger.
It makes sense as well. In the times when reels drilling and vertical format short films are consuming so much of time for the viewers and the attention span has reduced to maximum 2 minutes, you need a lot more variety on screen than ever before. To think of it, this was realised by Ramesh Sippy and the great Manmohan Desai back in the 70s itself when they assembled a truly great starcast in Sholay and Amar Akbar Anthony, and the blockbuster success of these films led to dozens of more biggies being made in the 70s and well into the 80s as well.
To think of it, the key poster boy of Sholay was Dharmendra while Amitabh Bachchan was the main selling point of Amar Akbar Anthony. However each and every cast member of these films had an almost equal pert to play, be it Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjeev Kumar and Hema Malini in the former or Vinod Khanna, Rishi Kapoor and Pran in the latter.
The trend continued for 15-20 more years and stars like Jeetendra, Shatrughan Sinha, Mithun Chakraborty, Sunny Deol, Sanjay Dutt, Anil Kapoor, Jackie Shroff and Govinda found themselves into various permutations and combinations week after week. While two hero film was a norm, there was quite usual too and four hero films further lent themselves a true multistarrer appeal.
Not to say that these heroes didn’t act in solo films; of course they did. However multistarrer releases was a charm and to counter the emergence of VCRs, more and more such films were made, and almost all were in the action space.
Somehow with NRI films making huge mark with the arrival of Shah Rukh Khan on the scene, it was solo arrival from that point on and may be just a few two hero films being made. This time, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar and Ajay Devgn started ruling and while they gave solo blockbusters, multi-starrer films with 3-4 heroes was out of the equation.
Indications are that there may just be revival of this concept if the box office outcome of some of the major most 2026 releases goes in ifs favour. First to arrive would be Welcome To The Jungle and while it’s led by Akshay Kumar, there are at half a dozen major names and then dozen more popular names in there as well, most notably being Suniel Shetty, Arshad Warsi, Disha Patani, Jacqueline Fernandez, Tusshar Kapoor and Paresh Rawal to name a few.
Then there is Dhamaal 4 with the OG cast of Riteish Deshmukh, Arshad Warsi and Javed Jaffrey returning with Ajay Devgn leading the show with his superstar presence. Last instalment had Anil Kapoor and Madhuri Dixit coming together as well so it has to be seen if filmmaker Indra Kumar has some more surprises in store this time around.
Ramayana is the biggest film of 2026 with Ranbir Kapoor and Yash in a face-off and Sai Pallavi making her real Hindi film debut after a forgettable Ek Din. Cinematic recreation of this epic legendary tale has Sunny Deol, Lara Dutta, Rakul Preet Singh, Kajal Aggarwal and Ravi Dubey in the mix as well along with the OG Arun Govil and that makes it a superb combination of stars in there.
As for the grand finale, it would be King that would conclude the year. As such, the name Shah Rukh Khan would have been enough, as was the case with Jawan as well where he was practically the only Bollywood superstar, albeit in a double role, carrying forward the film on his shoulders. However for King, he along with director Siddharth Anand have made the film indeed huge with practically half the industry coming together. With Deepika Padukone; Abhishek Bachchan, Arshad Warsi, Anil Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Rani Mukherji, Jaideep Ahlawat, Daghav Juyal and Saurabh Shukla coming together in the mix, this one is a huge Bollywood big screen debut for Suhana Khan who is also accompanied by Abhay Verma, Akshay Oberoi and Saurabh Shukla.
Clearly, such kind of Bollywood multistarrer affairs do remind of the golden days of the 70s and the 80s when films like these were in vogue. Though we are still looking at 4-5 such movies, hopefully they will succeed and that will give impetus to many more such cinematic experiences for the audiences.
