Hansal Mehta, Filmmaker, director and producer
Image: Bajirao Pawar for Forbes India
Hansal Mehta is known to stick his neck out and do what he believes in. Way back in 1993, for instance, when the makers of Khana Khazana, a television show that he directed, wanted a housewife to host it since it was related to cooking, he insisted that a chef, Sanjeev Kapoor, presents the series. It is such conventional mindsets that Mehta hopes to challenge with True Story Films, his newly launched production house in association with Sahil Saigal, who produced the filmmaker’s 2022 directorial Faraaz. The venture is backed by film industry veterans Vinod Bhanushali and Parag Sanghvi.
Known for hard-hitting films such as Shahid (2013) and Aligarh (2015), and popular web series like Scam 1992 (2020) and Scoop (2023), Mehta reveals that True Story Films will have content across genres, especially those that he has not attempted so far—love stories and big-ticket thrillers, for example. The National Award-winning filmmaker is also keen on making Gujarati films as a commitment to his roots. He says he has invested in writers who are working round-the-clock and that the banner should have its first few releases in 2026.
In a conversation with Forbes India at True Story Films’ cosy office in Bandra, Mumbai, Mehta, 56, talks about what compelled him to start a production house after a three-decade stint in the entertainment world, his creative and commercial vision, the reason he won’t cease to be an independent director, and why long-form storytelling excites him. Edited excerpts:
Q. How did the idea of starting a production house come about?
I’ve been informally involved in the production of my films for almost 25 years. I never formally ventured into production because of the kind of films I make… I have to have a tight control over how they are produced. My first instinct is that the films must recover their cost; you can never predict success, but in the event of a box office failure, you are at least secure. And certain films are discovered much later. So, I have always had that instinct. A couple of years ago, when I was directing Faraaz, I met Sahil—producer and [filmmaker] Mahesh Bhatt’s nephew—and found him like-minded. He has a passion for similar kind of stories and for telling those tales. He has an understanding of script and sensitivity towards artistes. I was clear that if I start a production company, it will be a conducive space for artistes, for people, to express themselves the way they want to, to express their voices through their work. So, the idea came from that space.
Q. How will the production house be different from any other?
Well, I don’t know how it’s going to be different. I think we have a lesser number of personal and boutique production houses. The idea is to enter into strategic linkages to enable and tell a wide variety of stories and have varied partnerships. In today’s times, you cannot work in isolation. It’s important that you spread your umbrella and include different partners and stakeholders in the process. The idea is not ultimately to make that windfall profit, but to have a model that is financially and creatively sustainable.
Q. You have worked as an independent director all these years. What are the advantages of setting up something like this?
I don’t cease being an independent director because direction is something that keeps me alive… that will not stop. I’m still a free bird. This entire thing of being bound because I started a production house is stifling. All these years I stayed away [from this] because I didn’t want that. If tomorrow somebody comes with a script that I like as a director and I have to give, say, three months or a year of my time, I will do it. But I will try to do it in such a way that True Story Films brings in some value to that kind of an association. But, say, in case of a franchise like Scam or Gandhi, that is entirely Applause, I will continue doing that.
That kind of exclusivity is not conducive. So, I don’t want to do that with any of the directors that work with me either. When you sign a contract for two or three films, it’s stifling for an artiste. I would refuse to do that myself. Why would I subject other artistes to that? Even if I launch an actor, I would like that person to go out and blossom. You have to be a nurturing space for talent. I am here as a facilitator of talent, of stories, of partnerships. I’ve been around for over 30 years, since Khana Khazana, and this is me giving back to the business that has given me so much.
Also read: Films are like true love. They take everything from you: Sohum Shah
Q. Do you have a creative vision for True Story Films?
One of the things that we focus on is development. Our major investment is in development. We have been developing ideas with writers and directors for the last two-and-a-half years, and it’s a wide variety of genres and different kinds of films. And there’s a lot of excitement among various external partners in the material that we’ve developed. It feels good that we’ve spent all this time and money in going with a script. I hate going with an idea and then telling an actor or a studio that if you like it, I will develop it further. We have put our money into development to ensure that we have bound scripts that are ready to be mounted, redeveloped or be fine-tuned once the strategic partners come in.
But yes, there are two focus points. As a director, I have always felt I have not made certain things, but I love watching them. For instance, I’ve not made a single love story in my entire career, so I would like to facilitate that. I would like to make that big-ticket thriller, but sort of infused with a certain amount of sensibility that it does not follow the bandwagon. One vision is clear that we are not part of any herd. There’s no herd mentality. There’s no hurry to emulate somebody.
Q. How crucial is the commercial angle?
I’ve always worked on the principle that films never fail. Budgets fail. And that’s the reason Sahil is there. You have to have an extremely strong control over costs. You have to make films at budgets that seem impossible, and that is crucial. The reason many films fail is because their costing is wrong. I can safely say that I have never lost money with any of the films that I have made; they always recover the money. I always tell filmmakers that if you want freedom, you have to buy it. Freedom is available at a cost, and that cost is budgets. You have to make films within a reasonable cost. You cannot think over-lavishly.
Q. What’s the content slate looking like? Will the first film come out next year?
We are expecting quite a few releases in 2026… all the productions go on floor beginning now. We have all kinds of films. We have a glorious, but a concept-driven comedy. We have a love story with songs, but a bit twisted. We have a thriller set in Gujarat. And we have a Gujarati film because that’s one of the commitments that I made when we were setting up the company—that at the minimum, I will make one or two Gujarati films a year. That is a commitment to my own roots. As a Gujarati, I feel sad about the quality of films and the kind of money that Gujarati movies earn. A Gujarati film is nowhere in the pan-India nonsense that goes on. You have all the other cinemas of India flourishing, including Marathi and other languages. Gujarati cinema, for some reason, is in a cocoon… the scales and stories of a Gujarati film are low on ambition.
Q. You’re getting into this for the first time. What are some of the challenges that you foresee?
The same challenges that I faced throughout my career… that you have to challenge the conventional mindsets. You have to break those. It started with Khana Khazana. They wanted a housewife to present the show. And I insisted that the chef does it. Zee TV did not agree with my vision, but ultimately, I got them to see reason. Similarly, people expect a love story to be something that they have seen before. What if I give you something that you’ve not seen before and invest in a cast that you don’t expect? So, it’s about challenging those mindsets and partnering with people who understand the need for safe disruption. I call it safe disruption… you don’t go disruptive to the extent that you disrupt your bank balance or balance sheet.
Q. What took you three decades to get into this?
I found the right person in Sahil to do this. My focus is still only creative. I just have ballparks that, ‘Okay, this can be made in this much… how people make it is their thing’. But I met Sahil and felt that yes, this model can work. We need to make better films, more cutting-edge, tell stories that appeal to the current generation. And tell more of those. I cannot possibly direct all the stories I want to see or all the stories I want to tell. So, this is a way of doing that. It’s come purely from that place.
Q. Why have you called it True Story Films?
I called it True Story Films because Shahid was a true story. It began my life, restarted my life. It was a new beginning… and so was the next milestone, Aligarh. In fact, every milestone in my life has been governed by a true story—Shahid, Aligarh, or a Scam 1992 and Scoop… each of those were turning points in my life. And now I am directing Gandhi—it’s an opportunity of a lifetime to tell the Mahatma’s story. So, my life has been defined by these true stories. It’s like a homage to wherever I am today. But of the stories that we have developed, there are only one or two real-life stories. The rest are fiction.
Q. Are you building and investing in a team?
We have a team. We have writers working round-the-clock. We nurture them, invest in them and monitor their output on a regular basis so that the volume of output is healthy. The problem we’ve had in the industry is that we don’t invest enough in writing. The writer comes after you set up a project… it has to be the other way round.
Q. What is the ultimate goal of setting up a production house?
Ultimately, it’s a business. The idea is to create value, to scale up operations and to raise more money to be able to do this on a larger scale.
Q. What’s next for you?
I’m directing Gandhi and I’m doing the next season of Scam. And I have a commitment with Netflix that I had signed a couple of years ago.
Q. The consumption patterns have changed since the pandemic. One can see the box office struggle even today. What is needed to win the audience’s attention?
That is definitely a challenge. In fact, streaming platforms have reduced because of a lot of tie-ups. So, the ecosystem is far more consolidated than it was four years ago. Now, within that, the stories that we tell are going to be the key. I think in the last two years, there have been a consistently good number of stories that have been told in the long form. We are taking more chances, and we are trying out much more in the long form, which is why I, as a director, have embraced that more. And so have some of my colleagues. The long form is offering us a lot of promise in terms of what we can tell. And there seems to be an audience for it. The subscription numbers, from what I know, have gone up. Each new show that comes out finds its audience. So, there is a place for a Black Warrant and Mismatched—they both populate the top 10 charts. There is place for Pataal Lok, Panchayat, Family Man, Scam and Scoop.
This is a business of consumption—it’s a consumer-driven business—so budgets have been rationalised. The platforms have clamped down heavily on the kind of budgets that we get and the money that we spend… so there’s a recalibration in the costs. That same kind of recalibration needs to happen in films. Unfortunately, our films get overpriced. We load them with too many overheads, so that recalibration somehow doesn’t happen because we serve the star more than the story. The moment we start putting the story above the star, we will be able to do that because even a star wants to be part of a great story.
The cost of bringing a film to the world needs to go down. And the ecosystem does not support it fully. For example, OTT subscriptions are still cheap, so subscribers get added. On the other hand, the multiplexes keep hiking up their ticket prices. How do you sustain a film with those costs?