Bollywood is bored. You can smell the desperation from the suburbs of Bandra all the way to the editing suites in Andheri. The old formulas—the star-crossed lovers, the weeping mothers, the item numbers—are hitting a wall of diminishing returns. So, the industry is doing what every panicked tech startup does when the VC funding dries up: they’re pivoting to "high concept."

The latest rumor floating through the trade papers is that Shahid Kapoor and Rashmika Mandanna, fresh off whatever Cocktail 2 is supposed to be, are eyeing a romantic comedy with a "sci-fi twist."

It’s a phrase that should make anyone who sat through Ra.One or Love Story 2050 break out in hives. In Mumbai, a "sci-fi twist" usually means a character has a holographic smartphone or there’s a scene involving a poorly rendered drone. But the buzz suggests something more integrated. Maybe a time-loop? An AI-generated soulmate? Whatever it is, it reeks of a boardroom trying to figure out how to capture the Gen Z "tech-native" audience without actually having to write a coherent script about technology.

Shahid Kapoor is currently in his "experimentation" phase. He’s spent the last few years oscillating between brooding alpha-male archetypes and gritty streaming roles, trying to scrub the boy-next-door image off his resume with varying degrees of success. Then there’s Rashmika Mandanna, the "National Crush" who has become the human equivalent of a push notification—impossible to ignore and appearing on every screen you own.

On paper, the pairing is pure algorithmic slurry. It’s designed to tick boxes: the seasoned performer with a loyal (if aging) female fanbase meets the high-energy star of the South-to-North crossover movement. It’s a marriage of demographics, not necessarily a meeting of creative minds.

But let’s talk about that "sci-fi" label. Bollywood has a specific friction with science fiction. It’s the budget. To make sci-fi look even remotely convincing in 2025, you need to throw serious cash at the screen. We’re talking about a production environment where the lead actor’s entourage and vanity van costs often rival the entire VFX budget. When you pay for a "sci-fi twist" in a mid-budget rom-com, you aren't getting Blade Runner. You’re getting a filter on an iPhone and a script that treats basic physics like a suggestion.

The trade-off is always the same. The producers want the "cool" factor of a futuristic gimmick, but the distributors want a wedding song. You end up with a film that’s too weird for the traditionalists and too shallow for the nerds. It’s a creative uncanny valley where the stakes feel lower because "it's just a movie," yet the technology is treated with the solemnity of a religious relic.

The timing is telling. Cocktail 2 is already a weird play—a sequel to a decade-old movie that succeeded mostly because of a specific zeitgeist and a killer soundtrack. To follow that up with a sci-fi pivot suggests a team that is throwing darts at a trend board. They’re looking for a "disruptor."

Is the world ready for Shahid Kapoor to explain the multiverse while trying to woo a girl in a choreographed dance sequence in the Swiss Alps? Probably not. But the industry doesn’t care about "ready." It cares about "marketable." A "Sci-Fi Rom-Com" sounds like something you can sell to a global streaming giant for a premium, even if the actual science in the film is less sophisticated than a 1990s Tamagotchi.

The real conflict here isn’t between the characters on screen. It’s between the ambition of the pitch and the reality of the execution. Bollywood producers love the idea of "innovation" until they see the invoice for a 4K render. Then, suddenly, the sci-fi twist becomes a dream sequence, and the high-concept tech is replaced by a magical locket.

If this project actually happens, we’ll see the usual press cycle. We'll hear about "unseen visuals" and "a story that hasn't been told before." We’ll see Shahid looking intensely at a green screen, pretending it’s a portal to another dimension, while the audience wonders if they can just skip to the part where everyone gets married.

But maybe that’s the real sci-fi twist: a Bollywood movie where the technology actually works, the plot makes sense, and nobody breaks into a song-and-dance routine to explain the theory of relativity.

Don't hold your breath.

How many pixels does it take to hide a script that was written in a weekend?