Kareena Kapoor Khan thinks Bollywood has a copying problem, and she used Animal to make the point.

In a conversation with Yuvaa, the actress said the industry tends to chase whatever just worked instead of asking why it worked. "Our audience is smarter than we think," she said. "They know exactly when it's a good film and they want to watch it. So today it is not just about a young love story. All these things are very dated, ki abhi violence chal rahi hai ki abhi Animal chal gayi toh chalo sab violence kar lete hain. We are herd mentality, what to say?"

That's Kareena's shorthand for a familiar cycle. A film breaks out, the industry decides it knows the formula, and a dozen imitators show up over the next two years chasing the same box-office math.

Animal is the example she reached for because it's hard to argue with the numbers. Sandeep Reddy Vanga's film, with Ranbir Kapoor as the troubled Ranvijay Singh opposite Anil Kapoor's distant father figure, crossed Rs 900 crore worldwide in 2023 despite reviews that flagged its violence as excessive. A sequel, Animal Park, is already in development. Kareena's argument isn't that Animal shouldn't have worked. It's that its success got read as a genre template rather than a one-off.

She drew a line between that kind of imitation and filmmakers who "want to make something different, who provoke your thoughts and who have their own fan following." Her read is that the audience is doing some of the sorting itself now, watching a trailer and deciding on its own terms rather than trusting a genre label. "Now filmmakers cannot go and make a film saying it's a comedy so people will definitely watch it," she said. "Not every film is going to make Rs 200 crore or Rs 500 crore. I feel like we are changing it and the audience is helping us."

It's a comment worth reading alongside where Kareena herself is headed next. She's currently awaiting the release of Daayra, an investigative drama directed by Meghna Gulzar with Prithviraj Sukumaran in a lead role, out in theatres on September 18. It's not a genre Bollywood has been flooding screens with lately, which is presumably the point she's making by contrast, even if she didn't say so directly.

Whether Daayra's opening numbers back up her theory about a more discerning audience is a separate question, and one the box office will answer in a little over a week. Bollywood's herd, meanwhile, hasn't shown signs of slowing down.