1. Mughal-e-Azam (1960) — At a time when Indian cinema was still finding its scale, this historical epic proved audiences would show up for genuine grandeur — elaborate sets, years-long production timelines, and a visual ambition few filmmakers had dared attempt before it.

2. Sholay (1975) — Shot in 70mm and built around a genre-blending mix of action, comedy and drama, Sholay effectively invented the "masala film" template that Bollywood commercial cinema has leaned on ever since, while giving the industry its most quoted villain in Gabbar Singh.

3. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) — Beyond making Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol a defining on-screen pairing, DDLJ reshaped how Bollywood approached the diaspora audience, blending NRI settings with traditional Indian values in a formula the industry spent the next decade replicating.

4. Lagaan (2001) — A three-hour period drama built around a cricket match sounds like a hard sell, yet it became a global crossover hit and earned an Academy Award nomination, proving unconventional scripts could still be commercially massive.

5. Dil Chahta Hai (2001) — Farhan Akhtar's directorial debut gave urban, English-speaking Indian youth a genre of their own — naturalistic dialogue, real friendships, real relationship anxieties — reshaping what a "youth film" could sound like for the next two decades of Bollywood.

6. Taare Zameen Par (2007) — Before this film, mainstream Bollywood had barely touched learning disabilities. Aamir Khan's story of a dyslexic child forced open a conversation about neurodivergence and educational pressure that Indian cinema had largely avoided until then.

7. Article 15 (2019) — A mainstream commercial film built directly around caste-based violence and systemic discrimination, delivered without the usual softening Bollywood applies to hard social subjects — a genuine departure from how the industry had historically handled caste on screen.

8. Gully Boy (2019) — Built around Mumbai's underground hip-hop scene and inspired by real street rappers, the film gave Bollywood a genuinely new subculture to draw from, opening space for grittier, music-driven urban stories that didn't exist in the mainstream before it.

9. Baahubali: The Beginning (2015) and The Conclusion (2017) — Technically Telugu rather than Hindi cinema, but its dubbed Hindi release rewired the entire industry's ambitions around scale, VFX investment and pan-India distribution, a shift Bollywood itself has been reacting to ever since.

10. Andhadhun (2018) — Proof that even in an era dominated by franchise thinking, a tightly written, morally ambiguous thriller with no easy resolution could still become one of the decade's most talked-about films — pulling Bollywood's thriller genre out of its more predictable habits.

From 70mm spectacle to street rap to a film that refused to resolve its own ending neatly, the throughline is the same: each of these took a real risk with either form, subject matter or scale — and the industry around them adjusted because of it.