‘Saiyaara' and a nation in the mood for love

India Today

3 days ago

(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated August 4, 2025)No reels were shot. No interviews given. No city tours or visits to malls and colleges. Relying on its ballad-heavy soundtrack and the track record of director Mohit Suri (who has done most of the pre-release heavy lifting), a romantic drama featuring two newcomers—Ahaan Panday and Aneet Padda—has sprung out of nowhere to create a mini tremor at the box office. Opening day collections? Rs 21.5 crore. Doubts about the figure being inflated or fudged were abound, but by the weekend of July 18, nobody could deny that Saiyaara, a new film about a young couple whose love is challenged when one of them develops early-onset Alzheimer's, is a smash hit. Rs 83 crore in three days! Records have already piled up: biggest opening weekend for a film featuring rookies, biggest opening for a romantic film in Indian cinema... With week one set to easily cross the Rs 150 crore mark, the film is destined to enter the Rs 300 crore club. That these numbers come at a time when the love story was deemed a deadbeat genre on the big screen has made this accomplishment all the more impressive.advertisementBut how did it happen? The key, as has been the case with many of Suri's previous romantic outings (Murder 2, Aashiqui 2, Ek Villain), may be the soundtrack, which not only complements his emotional narratives but at times also supercedes it. Saiyaara's album features fresh vocal talent like Faheem Abdullah, who has sung and co-composed the title track, which has busted the charts and has the youth singing along.Says Suri, 'If I have had a good musical record, it's because my education has been with a company that prioritised and paid attention to music and lyrics.' He credits his uncles Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt, whose banner Vishesh Films gave him his big break, and adds, 'Music and romance go hand in hand. Tell me one love story that did well but didn't have good music. I like to have my ears to the ground, to stay in touch with what people are hearing and connecting to.' Earworms he's anchored like 'Phir Mohabbat', 'Tum Hi Ho' and 'Galliyan' still dominating the airwaves are proof that he knows what he's doing.
MUSIC MEETS FILMJust a track record of successful romantic releases, however, didn't mean that Suri had an easy time selling the movie to producers. He conceived the film at a time when the genre was struggling to put bums on seats. The industry belief has been that ever since COVID-19, the audience has been content watching love stories from the comfort of their homes on OTT platforms and it is the adrenaline-heavy, larger-than-life action spectacles that are thriving on the big screen.Suri felt the void. It helped that he had just happened to see The Romantics, the Netflix documentary series tracking the origin and rise of Yash Raj Films (YRF). 'I was roaming around with the script and a lot of people were genuinely concerned about me and said that no one is going to make a film like this,' he says. Loosely inspired by Korean film A Moment to Remember, Suri wanted to craft a musical romance around a creative partnership—a hotheaded singer and a heartbroken writer who inspires him and he her.advertisement'[The male lead, played by Panday] has bare raw talent who doesn't know what to do with it; [the female lead, Padda] has the words and knows how to channelise the best from him. They are soul mates but can't be together,' he adds. This dynamic is different from the one in his other blockbuster romance, Aashiqui 2, which was more supportive than competitive.Little did Suri know that Yash Raj Films, otherwise busy building up their Spy Universe, was on the lookout for a love story. To invest Rs 50 crore on a film with two twentysomething newcomers was a gamble they were willing to take. Casting director Shanoo Sharma, who has brought to Bollywood talents like Anushka Sharma, Ranveer Singh and Bhumi Pednekar, found the perfect pair in Panday (cousin of Ananya Panday) and Padda, whose earlier credit is a little-seen web series Big Girls Don't Cry. YRF was confident it had an ace up its sleeves with the genre it was once synonymous with—romance.'It meant a lot to me that mine was the film with which YRF wanted to come back to the genre,' says Suri. 'My education in romantic films was going to theatres and watching Yash [Chopra] ji and Adi [Aditya] sir's films. We all grew up falling in love with the kind of films they did.'advertisementInterestingly, the young leads were spared the burden of a promotional blitz. 'We wanted to take away those expectations,' says Suri. 'I think they have excelled. They have given it their all. They went all in, their hunger is there. They are more skilled and prepared than [we were when] we started out. They want their work to talk.'RETURN OF ROMANCEAnd talk it has, with 27-year-old Panday, particularly, being celebrated as the next big thing. Much chatter has been around how the film could portend the return of romance in Hindi cinema. After all, not since Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai, 25 years back, has a love story with debutants been embraced with such gusto.But the crystal ball remains hazy. Kaho Naa... came at the tail-end of a decade of love stories, in which Shah Rukh Khan led the wave with his trademark outstretched arms. In recent times, the only other Hindi romantic film to have connected so feverishly with audiences was Sandeep Reddy Vanga's Kabir Singh (2019), with its wild-child of a hero leaving some audiences unsettled by his rage and antics.advertisement
Yet the industry appears hopeful. 'Thankfully, Saiyaara has made heads turn and made everyone realise that it's the big intrinsic idea that really drives the box office.... I hope it makes the industry realise that what we need is not one genre over and over again. We need to give audiences a variety,' says Akkshay Rathie, director at Aashirwad Theatres and a film exhibitor. Annukampa Harsh, a fortysomething writer who saw the film with her mother, says that Saiyaara is proof that 'the old school works.... We don't need 'modern' love stories. The only thing new about love today is how we seek it.'advertisementWhether any of the upcoming romantic films in the next few months (see Love is in the Air) will resonate the way Saiyaara has with the audiences remains to be seen. But what is clear right now is that Panday and Padda are two of the industry's brightest young stars basking in the success of a debut that could only have been written in the stars.Subscribe to India Today Magazine- Ends