2025 box office snapshot: A pulse for Hindi films, a power run for regional cinema

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After the high point at the box office with Chhaava’s Rs 600 crore business, Bollywood soon saw a slump when the much-awaited and expected blockbuster Sikandar starring Salman Khan fell flat.

The highs and lows the Hindi box office saw so far seems to have steadied last month with the performances of films like Kesari 2 and Jaat that kept the cash registers ringing.
While Kesari Chapter 2 starring Akshay Kumar and Sunny Deol’s Jaat crossed Rs 100 crore mark, the films are not considered successful due to their high budgets. Kesari 2 is reportedly made on a budget of Rs 150 crore and the cost of making Jaat is around Rs 100 crore.

This signals the growing troubles for Hindi films despite some decent performances.
Although there are as many as three hindi films among the highest grossing movies of 2025 including Chhaava, Sky Force and Sikandar, only Vicky Kaushal’s period drama Chhaava turned out to be profitable.

Hindi cinema, which once commanded the lion's share in the overall box office pie, has seen a significant decline with a fluctuating share of 33 percent in 2022, 44 percent in 2023 and 37 percent last year, according to a 2025 Ernst & Young report on the media and entertainment industry. The share includes contributions of South Indian films dubbed in Hindi. The dubbed versions even helped the Hindi box office to reduce its losses significantly last year. In addition, Hindi cinema’s reliance on dubbed films grew by almost 5 times in 2024.

This year in the first four months, the share of Hindi films stands at 39 per cent.
Uday Shankar, co-founder of Bodhi Tree Systems and vice-chairman of JioStar at the recently concluded WAVES (World Audio Visual & Entertainment Summit) had highlighted the dip in the Hindi film market.

He said that Hindi movies have taken a huge hit but that is not the case in the southern part of the country. “Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, there is a creative resurgence and that creative resurgence is travelling and is translating into huge amounts of economic upsides. But the Hindi film industry or Bollywood has a huge problem. It is still frozen in time in terms of the nature of the product that it creates. I think the consumers have moved far ahead and the creative industry in Bollywood is still stuck in time and that is clearly not working. Plus, they have kept the gates closed mostly or when they open, they open narrowly for the flood of new talent."

In 2024, Hindi cinema had seen a steep decline to Rs 5,000 crore from Rs 6,600 crore in the previous year. Only four Hindi films made it to the top 10 list of highest grossing films with south Indian movies dominating the charts.

Movies from down south not only saw their share increasing to 48 percent last year from 42 percent but have also gained the top spot in terms of revenue with business of Rs 7,000 crore, up from Rs 5,400 crore. Regional cinema especially South Indian movies continue to lead the charge this year with Ajith Kumar’s Good Bad Ugly emerging as the top-grossing film of April collecting over Rs 180 crore. It is also the highest-grossing Tamil film of the year so far.

April has also turned out to be a strong month for Malayalam movies, grossing over Rs 200 crore for the second time ever after February 2024, noted an analysis by media consulting firm Ormax.

Four Malayalam films have made it to the top 10 highest-grossing films which includes Thudarum, Alappuzha Gymkhana, Maranamass and Bazooka.

Thudarum starring Mohanlal has grossed around Rs 150 crore at the domestic box office.
Overall, after a sharp dip in March with Rs 581 crore box office business across languages, box office regained momentum with gross domestic collections of Rs 825 crore.

The cumulative box office for January-April releases in 2025 stands at Rs 3,691 crore, 19 percent higher as compared to the same period last year driven by regional film successes.