Ritesh Sidhwani: Excel Never Follows Trends, Even for Don

Excel Entertainment co-founder Ritesh Sidhwani has a simple rule for the company behind Dil Chahta Hai and Don: do not follow trends. In a new interview with Bollywood Hungama, he connected that philosophy to two very different milestones—the banner’s own Hindi hits and its decision to back the Hindi release of Prashanth Neel’s KGF.

Why KGF worked, in Sidhwani’s telling

Asked about the ongoing conversation around South Indian cinema dominating the box office, Sidhwani offered a grounded response. Many South filmmakers, including Prashanth Neel, openly share that they grew up watching classic Salim-Javed stories, he said. That influence, Sidhwani noted, shows up in their storytelling.

“KGF works here because we are not telling the stories in a certain way,” Sidhwani said. He added that he saw the film and thoroughly enjoyed it, framing the moment less as a regional takeover and more as an exchange of ideas between storytelling traditions.

“Our approach is to never follow trends, and that’s what we kept in mind while making Don too.”

The quote sits at the center of his argument. For Excel, a project should begin with excitement and personal connection, not with a calculation about whatever is currently working.

The Excel playbook in practice

For our readers, the takeaway is bigger than one production house. Sidhwani’s comments push back on the idea that Hindi cinema should simply borrow what succeeds in another market. He argued that Indian audiences are accepting of every kind of cinema, so there is little reason to assume that “whatever is working in the South should be done here.”

• Start with passion: only back stories that excite you and feel relatable, not trends reverse-engineered from box-office data.
• Evolve, don’t copy: constant change matters more than repeating a formula; Don was built on that same instinct.
• Respect the audience: viewers here already accept all kinds of cinema, so no single regional template should become the default.

Where this leaves Hindi producers

Sidhwani’s position matters because Excel occupies a useful middle lane: it has backed a Pan-India blockbuster in KGF’s Hindi release and built its own reputation on mainstream Hindi films. His caution is against panic-driven green-lighting.

That does not mean ignoring what connects elsewhere. It means studying the emotional reason a film works rather than borrowing its surface. In Sidhwani’s framing, the next hit is more likely to come from a story the makers genuinely believe in than from a boardroom checklist.

Source: bollywoodHungama.com

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#Bollywood producers#Box Office#Don#Excel Entertainment#Hindi Cinema#KGF#Ritesh Sidhwani#Salim-Javed