This film was produced by Dharma Productions and Sikhya Entertainment, the same studios from whom we expect love stories and emotional dramas. Karan Johar's Dharma is synonymous with grand weddings, romantic triangles, and family sagas. Sikhya Entertainment has backed meaningful cinema but nothing quite like this. But Kill was a pure genre shift for them, a violent action thriller that had no romance, no songs, no emotional melodrama. Just pure, brutal action.

The Toronto Standing Ovation

Kill premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023, after which it received a standing ovation there because the action in this film is totally different. International audiences who've seen everything from Hollywood blockbusters to Korean action cinema stood up and applauded. Critics who watch hundreds of films every year called it one of the most intense action experiences they'd witnessed. This wasn't polite festival applause. This was genuine shock and appreciation.

No slow-mo hero entries, no stylized punches. Here the action is close, raw, and claustrophobic because the film's main sequences are set inside a moving train. Which means less space, real moves, hard impact. The camera doesn't pull back to show elaborate choreography. It stays tight, making you feel every punch, every crash, every desperate struggle. The train setting turned limitations into advantages, creating action sequences that felt suffocatingly real.

What Made Kill Different

The brilliance of Kill's action isn't in scale or budget. It's in commitment to realism within a confined space. When fights happen in train compartments, there's no room for flying kicks or wire work. Bodies slam against metal seats. People grab whatever's nearby as weapons. The chaos feels genuine because it's constrained by real physics and real space. This isn't superheroes or martial arts masters. This is desperate people fighting for survival in extremely close quarters.

And this raw, breathing reality action caught Hollywood's attention. American studios have mastered big-budget action spectacles, but they've also become somewhat formulaic. Fast cuts, CGI enhancements, impossible physics. Kill offered something they'd lost: visceral, grounded action that makes audiences wince because it feels real. The kind of action where you believe people are actually getting hurt.

Hollywood Comes Calling

Then Lionsgate, who made John Wick, The Hunger Games, and other global hits, officially acquired the remake rights for Kill. This isn't some small production company looking for content. This is Lionsgate, a major Hollywood studio that knows action films inside and out. They looked at Kill and saw something worth remaking for American audiences, something their own industry hadn't produced.

And the most interesting part: this remake is being handled by Chad Stahelski's 87 Eleven Entertainment, the same studio that made John Wick's action a global benchmark. Meaning this time, the equation has been reversed. For decades, Bollywood has remade Hollywood films, adapted Western stories, and borrowed American action styles. Now, the people who created John Wick's legendary action sequences are remaking an Indian film because they recognized it did something they hadn't.

Why This Matters

This reversal is significant beyond just one remake deal. It represents a shift in how global cinema flows. Indian films are no longer just consuming international content, they're creating content that international markets want to consume. Kill proved that innovative filmmaking can come from anywhere, that Bollywood can produce action that impresses the same people who make Hollywood action films.

Chad Stahelski choosing to remake Kill validates what Indian action cinema is capable of when it breaks from formula. It's not about matching Hollywood budgets or copying Western styles. It's about finding unique approaches, using constraints creatively, and committing fully to a vision. The train setting wasn't just a location choice, it was a creative decision that forced innovation.

The Dharma Production Risk

For Dharma Productions, Kill represents the kind of risk established studios rarely take. They could have stuck to their proven formula of romantic dramas and family entertainers. Instead, they backed a violent, experimental action film with no stars and an unconventional approach. That risk paid off not just commercially but in establishing Dharma as a studio willing to push boundaries.

Karan Johar said in interviews that Kill was unlike anything his production house had done before, but that's exactly why he wanted to do it. The standing ovation at Toronto, the Lionsgate deal, the Hollywood remake by John Wick's creators, all of this validates that creative risk-taking can lead to international recognition that safe, formulaic films never achieve.