Alpha

The story

Alpha follows Sita (Alia Bhatt), a lethal, isolated super-soldier raised from childhood by a rogue commander as part of a covert military program that gives the film its name. When she begins to uncover the truth about her stolen childhood and the family she never knew, her hunt for answers brings her into the orbit of India's intelligence establishment and, eventually, a long-lost twin sister, Durga (Sharvari).

The two women join forces to dismantle the man who created Sita and the shadowy program behind him. As a YRF Spy Universe entry, the plot is built around double-crosses, a buried conspiracy and large-scale action, with Anil Kapoor as R&AW chief Colonel Vikrant Kaul and Bobby Deol as the film's antagonist. Yash Raj has kept the sharper twists under wraps, but the emotional spine is the sisters' bond set against a betrayal decades in the making.

A first for the Spy Universe

Alpha is the seventh film in Yash Raj Films' interconnected Spy Universe, the franchise that began with Ek Tha Tiger (2012) and runs through Tiger Zinda Hai, War, Pathaan, Tiger 3 and War 2. Its headline distinction is that it is the first female-led chapter of that universe, handing the action reins to two women, Alia Bhatt and Sharvari, rather than the Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Hrithik Roshan figures who anchored earlier films.

The connective tissue to the wider saga is deliberate. Anil Kapoor reprises the R&AW chief he played in War 2 (2025), and Hrithik Roshan appears in a cameo as Kabir Dhaliwal, the agent he originated in War. For YRF, the film was framed as a test of whether its blockbuster spy template could carry a female-fronted story, a gamble the studio leaned into heavily in its marketing.

Making of the film

Alpha marks the feature directorial debut of Shiv Rawail, who had earlier drawn notice for the Netflix series The Railway Men and was recruited by producer Aditya Chopra for the project. The screenplay is credited to Soumil Shukla and Shridhar Raghavan, with dialogues by Ishita Moitra and the story by Uday Chopra; Rubais handled cinematography and Aarif Sheikh edited.

To sell the two leads as convincing action performers, the production brought in action director Craig Macrae and trainer Jessen Noviello, who had worked on the John Wick films, to put Bhatt and Sharvari through an extended fight- and weapons-training regimen. Principal photography began in mid-2024 and stretched into late 2025, shooting across Mumbai, Kashmir (including Sonamarg and Pahalgam), Ladakh, Cherrapunji in Meghalaya, and Valladolid in Spain.

The road to release was bumpy. Originally floated for a Christmas 2025 opening, the film was pushed back through 2026 amid extensive post-production before finally arriving in cinemas on 3 July 2026 with a running time of roughly 140 minutes.

Music

The soundtrack was composed by Rohansh and Abeer Pandit, with the background score by the brothers Sanchit and Ankit Balhara, released through YRF Music alongside the film. The album mixes club-leaning tracks such as "Massacre," "Champagne" and "Haaniya" with the more rousing "Vaar Vaar," plus a suite of instrumental themes tied to individual characters.

Playback voices on the record include Shilpa Rao, Jonita Gandhi, Vishal Dadlani and Akasa Singh, with lyrics from writers including Kumaar, Anvita Dutt and Kausar Munir. In reviews, "Vaar Vaar" tended to be singled out as the standout, while the visually aggressive "Massacre" divided opinion.

Reception and box office

Alpha opened to mixed-to-negative reviews. Critics were split on whether it worked best as a spy thriller, a straight actioner or a family melodrama, and several found the writing predictable even as they credited the film's craft and its two leads. Alia Bhatt drew praise for carrying the physicality of the role and for a restrained emotional register, Sharvari for her screen presence in the action beats, and Bobby Deol for a stylish turn as the villain, though some felt the script gave him too little to chew on.

At the box office the film made a modest start. It opened to around ₹9 crore net in India on its first day and accumulated in the region of ₹85–90 crore worldwide across its opening stretch, an underwhelming figure against an estimated budget of roughly ₹100–125 crore and the lofty benchmarks set by earlier Spy Universe hits. As reported figures were still climbing in its second week, the consensus was that Alpha had landed as one of the franchise's softer performers commercially, even as its status as the universe's first woman-led film gave it a place in the series' history.

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