The Blue-Sky Studio

By Pickle September 7, 2026

By Natarajan Vidyasagar

How Jio Studios turned India’s No. 1 slate into the country’s first true content multinational

Three years, three biggest films in the country. Stree 2 in 2024. Dhurandhar in 2025. Dhurandhar: The Revenge in 2026. No Indian studio has ever strung that together, and RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani said so himself when he told shareholders that Jio Studios had achieved “the unique distinction of having the highest-grossing film three years in a row… demonstrating consistency and undisputed leadership”

The gap is no longer a lead. It is blue sky.

At the Reliance AGM in June, Akash Ambani described Jio Studios as India’s No. 1 content studio by revenue, catalogue size and box-office share, with the Dhurandhar duology crossing ₹3,100 crore worldwide — the first Indian two-part franchise in which each film crossed ₹1,000 crore globally. Trade analysts put the duology’s combined cost at under ₹500 crore. That is not a hit. That is a business model.

The eight-year build

Jyoti Deshpande, President, Jio Studios set the studio up in 2018 and has described it as something she built “from the ground up”, from zero. Eight years on, the catalogue runs past 200 films and series, with more than 60 titles carrying awards. The 100-film slate she unveiled at Jio World Convention Centre in 2023 has since been deliberately narrowed into a sharper doctrine: fewer films, bigger bets, what she calls “massive cinematic excellence” designed to pull audiences back into theatres.

Her greenlight test is unquantitative. “I am more focused on looking into the eye of a filmmaker and gauge his or her conviction,” said Jyoti Deshpande. “This is vital for me in backing a film. And then other variables follow”. She framed the portfolio logic plainly: diverse genres, diverse budgets, diverse audiences, with hundreds of stories heard before five or six are backed in a year. “A fantastic story and a big star cast is magic, but just having a star and a sub-standard story will not guarantee you success”.

And she plays offence. “I don’t make films looking at the downside… I always play for the upside and not really looking to break even in a film,” she had said of the Dhurandhar call.

The year the awards followed the money

At the 72nd National Film Awards, Article 370 — produced by Jio Studios with B62 Studios and directed by Aditya Suhas Jambhale — won the Swarna Kamal for Best Feature Film, along with Best Actress for Yami Gautam and Best Music Direction (Songs) for Shashwat Sachdev, making it one of the most-awarded films of the year. Stree 2 added Best Choreography for Vijay Ganguly. No other studio carried both the nation’s top honour and the year’s top grosser.

The pattern was set a season earlier, when Jio Studios took 16 wins at the 70th Filmfare Awards from 54 nominations and three of five Best Film nominees — the highest ever for a studio, with Laapataa Ladies alone winning 13.

Look at what produced those trophies. Laapataa Ladies, a small-town comedy with no stars, India’s official Oscar entry and a Netflix international Top 10 title watched in more than 43 countries. Shaitaan, a supernatural family horror. Article 370, a policy thriller. Mrs, a domestic drama. Stree 2, a horror-comedy franchise built without an A-lister. Five films, five different rooms of Indian cinema.

The talent machine

The real dividend is the bench. Article 370 made a national-award-winning director of Jambhale, who followed it with the Netflix release Baramulla. Dhurandhar handed Aditya Dhar the biggest canvas in the industry; when 40 days of Thailand shooting outgrew the script, Jyoti Deshpande funded the overrun and split it into two films rather than compress it. “It was more deeply patriotic than many films that pretend to be patriotic. That is why I greenlit it. It was bold, different and clutter-breaking,” she said.

The same instinct opened languages. Jio Studios backed Riteish Deshmukh’s directorial Raja Shivaji, which released on Maharashtra Day 2026 in Marathi, Hindi and Telugu and grossed over ₹130 crore.

Next on that ladder: Nagraj Manjule’s Khashaba, the Marathi biopic of India’s first individual Olympic medallist, with music by Ajay-Atul, opening worldwide on January 1, 2027.

Buying the festival gene

In February 2026, Reliance Strategic Business Ventures acquired 50.1% of Guneet Monga Kapoor and Achin Jain’s Sikhya Entertainment for about $16.6 million, valuing the two-time Oscar-winning house at roughly $33 million. Sikhya brought Period. End of Sentence., The Elephant Whisperers, Masaan, Soorarai Pottru and Kathal.

The first fruit arrived fast. Dorothy, Karthik Subbaraj’s tenth feature with Keerthy Suresh, produced by Sikhya, Dhammam Films and Jio Studios, world-premiered in the Centrepiece section at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival before its September 25 worldwide release. A Tamil independent film, cast light on stars, carried to Toronto by the same studio that owns the year’s biggest blockbuster. That is the whole thesis in one credit block.

The MNC question

Jyoti Deshpande’s stated ambition is to sit alongside Paramount, Disney, Lionsgate and MGM within five years — through organic and inorganic moves, separating India rights from overseas rights, appointing sales agents across Europe, North America and Australia, and working titles through Berlin and Cannes into 100 to 135 markets. Franchise IP — Stree, Bhediya, Munjya, Thama, Mahaavatar — is the compounding asset. “Our dream is to unlock the 360-degree value of our IPs,” she says.

Behind it sits ₹4,000–5,000 crore committed to content over three years, 30-40% above the previous cycle, and 10-12 films a year across languages — with distribution muscle now extending to acquisitions such as North India rights for Ram Charan’s Peddi.

Indian cinema needs this output. A theatrical business recovering its confidence needs one house willing to fund the ₹1,000-crore swing and the Toronto premiere in the same quarter, to launch a first-time director and a Marathi Olympic biopic while running the country’s top franchise. Jio Studios is that house. Its scoreboard is the industry’s floor now — and the distance behind it is the clearest signal of how much room Indian cinema still has to run.