Like flies hovering over a mithai in a sweetshop, Bollywood filmmakers keep gravitating to an old trend that never gets old: biopics. At least five such movies have hit the theatres this year, with the most awaited one, Emergency, yet to find a release date. This sub-genre has thrived for so long that even the reported pieces on it sound stale. Commenting on the trend in 2015 and 2024, The Quint and Deccan Chronicle published identical headlines (“It’s Raining Biopics in Bollywood”). With over 40 of them releasing in the last decade—many finding novel ways to be mediocre, swinging from brain-dead to propagandist—this formula continues to flourish.