Alia Bhatt calls out Bollywood’s ‘75% male audience’ argument: ‘What happens to the women?’

During a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter India on the sidelines of the festival, Alia questioned the film industry’s long-standing focus on catering primarily to male audiences.

Alia Bhatt questioned the film industry’s long-standing focus on catering primarily to male audiences. The actor said she often finds herself wondering why conversations around cinema continue to revolve around making films for men instead of creating stories that connect with everyone.

According to Alia, storytelling should be “gender-agnostic,” where the strength of the content matters more than targeting a particular section of the audience.

Alia pointed to the success of films such as Barbie, Wuthering Heights and The Devil Wears Prada 2 as examples while questioning why Indian cinema still largely caters to male audiences.

“When I look at the landscape, I think we’re in a very fascinating time today… If you take a look at the box office, you’ll see the films that have done phenomenally well: Barbie, Wuthering Heights, and The Devil Wears Prada. These are a few; I am sure there are way more, and their main audience, perhaps, was women. Women were showing up, watching these films, which have now become massive hits,” Alia said.

Alia says Indian films are male centric

Talking about Indian cinema, Alia added, “But in India, when we talk about box office and numbers, there is a conversation that comes up pretty often, which is 75% of the movie-going audience is male, so we need to cater to the masses. This conversation comes up quite a bit. I wonder if we are catering just to the men, then what happens to the women? I am not saying alineate the men, but why do we have to alienate anyone? Why do we have to cater to one gender? Why can’t we make movies that are gender-agnostic, where the storytelling takes centre stage? So, whether it stars a man or a woman, that should not matter. It is the storytelling that should matter. I’m just hoping we have more of that.”

During the chat, Alia also opened up about returning to Cannes in 2026 after making her debut at the festival last year.

Reflecting on her first experience, Alia shared that it had felt “chaotic,” revealing that she barely had time to take in the atmosphere before stepping onto the red carpet. Bhatt also spoke about the pride and responsibility of representing India on an international platform.

Alia is back at the festival as the global ambassador for beauty brand L’Oréal Paris. The film festival started on May 12 and will run till May 23.

Alia’s Cannes’ looks so far:

Alia was first seen wearing a landscape-print ball gown by Yash Patil. For her first red-carpet appearance, Alia Bhatt chose a custom haute couture creation by Tamara Ralph. The actor complemented her blush-toned gown with a striking necklace adorned with 168.27 carats of rare pink coral, while her look was styled by Rhea Kapoor.

Work front

On the work front, Alia will next be seen in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Love & War alongside Ranbir Kapoor and Vicky Kaushal. She also has the spy thriller Alpha in the pipeline.