Money after the opening weekend
Top Bollywood stars are quietly rewriting contract terms to demand profit participation and streaming-linked bonuses instead of only huge upfront fees, according to reporting from The Hollywood-focused desks of Rolling Stone on Oct. 26. The shift mirrors how A-list actors in Los Angeles fought for (and won) a share of digital revenue once box office alone stopped telling the whole story. In Mumbai, the trigger is simple: straight-to-streaming premieres and rapid OTT drops mean theatrical earnings no longer capture a film’s real life. Actors want a slice of that long tail. Production executives told Rolling Stone that at least three bankable leads recently tied their payout to how fast a film reaches a top slot on Indian streaming dashboards in week one, not just ticket sales in the first weekend. That is new.

Studios under pressure, mid-tier talent squeezed
This shift could crack Bollywood’s old pyramid. For decades, producers front-loaded budgets to secure a star and then lived or died on theatrical hype. Now, if A-listers get a piece of downstream revenue, someone else gets pushed down. Mid-tier actors and technical crews risk feeling that squeeze first. At the same time, platforms are quietly cheering, because performance-based deals let them frame hits as data-driven “audience wins,” not ego-driven vanity projects. Insiders say the new math also reflects audience behavior: viewers in India and the diaspora binge fast, meme fast and move on fast. If a film’s clip goes viral in 72 hours, most of its cultural value is basically spent by day four. Bollywood talent wants to be paid for that spike. The old DVD-and-satellite backend is gone; streaming metrics are the new royalty.