After a few years in which South Indian films have been taking most of the headlines at the Indian box office, Hindi cinema had a reprieve in 2025, clocking up its biggest year ever, with an 18% increase in total box office to $609.78M (Rs55BN), according to figures from Ormax Media.
Non-Indian films, which mostly means Hollywood, also had a strong year in 2025 with revenues increasing by 49% to $155M (Rs14BN), headed by Disney’s Avatar: Fire And Ash.
Ormax also reported that India’s overall box office reached its highest level ever last year, with total revenues of $1.48BN (Rs133.95BN), surpassing the previous record achieved in 2023 of $1.35BN (Rs122.26BN). Deadline sat down with Ormax founder and CEO Shailesh Kapoor on a recent visit to Mumbai to talk through the figures.
Kapoor notes that Hindi cinema achieved growth mostly from original Hindi-language titles, compared to some previous years, when a big chunk of revenue came from the Hindi dubbed versions of South Indian films. In 2025, the box office share of South Indian films dubbed in Hindi declined to just 7%, compared to 31% the previous year.
Jio Studios’ Hindi-language Dhurandhar, a Pakistan-set spy thriller starring Ranveer Singh, was the highest-grossing film of 2025, with box office of $105.25M (Rs9.5BN), also breaking records to become the biggest Hindi-language film of all time. Kannada-language prequel Kantara A Legend: Chapter 1 came in second with $80M, followed by another Hindi title, historical epic Chhaava, with $76.5M.
In contrast, the cumulative share of the four South Indian language film industries dropped from 48% in 2024 to 44% in 2025, with only Kannada-language films showing growth. In 2024, two Telugu-language titles – Pushpa 2: The Rule and Kalki 2898 AD – took the number one and two slots at the Indian box office.
Kapoor explains that the performance of the South Indian industries is mostly down to the pipeline of releases: “In 2024, there were two big South Indian films that contributed around 20% to overall box office just by themselves. In 2025, a few big South Indian films didn’t fire as expected and there were no huge franchise films on the level of Pushpa or K.G.F.”
Although Dhurandhar brought in record-breaking revenues, Kapoor adds that Hindi cinema’s recovery in 2025 was due to growth in the volume of films across different genres, rather than one or two star-driven hits: “We had hits like Saiyaara, a romantic drama, which the industry believed had lost impact as a theatrical genre; Chhaava, which is a historical epic, not a conventional action film; and an animated feature like Mahavatar Narsimha, which did huge numbers considering animation has not really taken off in India.”
Shailesh Kapoor, founder & CEO, Ormax Media
Kapoor also observes that the strong performance of a wider range of genres is bringing confidence back to the Hindi industry. “Over the past few years, the Mumbai studios were not really sure what will work and what audiences want, so there was a lot of sitting on scripts, or approaching the OTTs because they thought the films were not theatrical. As a result, the supply had really slowed down. But in general, throughout 2025, especially in the second half of the year, there’s been steady flow of films.”
Dhurandhar faced multiple controversies, including a legal battle over the portrayal of a deceased Indian army officer, and accusations that the film is nationalistic and anti-Muslim, leading to it being banned in several Middle East countries (including big Bollywood markets such as Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar).
Ironically, the intense debate around the film probably contributed to its success in India, with many people who are not regular cinemagoers going to see it in theatres to judge for themselves. “The noise around the film definitely helped because everyone was curious to watch it,” says Kapoor. “But there again, you’re not likely to have more than one or two films a year that manage to generate this level of controversy”.
Hollywood Comeback
Of course, like Bollywood, Hollywood’s pipeline has also slowed down over the past few years. In 2024, box office for Hollywood films declined 17% to $109.4M and an 8% market share, with no titles landing in the year-end top ten.
However, last year Hollywood films clocked up 49% growth to $155M, taking a 10% market share, marking the highest-grossing year for the industry since the pandemic, and the second best year of all time after 2019.
Avatar: Fire And Ash was the highest-grossing international title, ranking at number eight in the year-end chart with $26.48M (Rs2.39BN). Notably, four other titles grossed more than the $11M (Rs1BN) benchmark – also including F1: The Movie, Jurassic World Rebirth, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and The Conjuring: Last Rites.
“While Avatar’s success was expected, something like F1 doing well in India is really interesting, because it’s not the conventional genre franchise film that you’d expect to deliver those numbers,” says Kapoor. “It’s also a premium audience, high ticket price, IMAX kind of movie. So you’re seeing what we saw with Oppenheimer – films that can go beyond the franchise model, sometimes because they’re director driven, but in this case it was more organic and word-of-mouth.”
Kapoor also notes the success of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle, the sixth highest grossing foreign movie of 2025, taking around $10M, suggesting a future niche market at the Indian box office for Japanese anime.
Rising Ticket Prices & Upcoming Slate
While Indian box office growth is encouraging, Kapoor also observes that it is higher ticket prices that are keeping revenues afloat, as admissions were down by 6% to 832 million compared to the previous year. Average ticket prices were up by 20% to $1.78 (Rs161), compared to $1.48 (Rs134) the previous year.
“This was mostly driven by the South where they’ve removed some of the regulations against ticket price increases – mostly in the Telugu markets of Andra Pradesh and Telegana – where bigger films have started releasing at almost Hindi level ticket prices at least on the opening weekend,” explains Kapoor. “Also a Karnataka High Court overturned a ticket price cap that the state government wanted to implement.”
Looking forward, there’s a strong release slate of both Hindi and South Indian films scheduled for 2026. Upcoming Hindi films include a sequel to Dhurandhar, Dhurandhar: The Revenge; Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Love And War and Nitesh Tiwari’s Ramayana Part 1, both starring Ranbir Kapoor and set for August and Diwali respectively, and Shah Rukh Khan’s King, which is lined up for Christmas.
South India is also rolling out some big titles including Geetu Mohandas’ Toxic: A Fairytale For Grown-ups, starring Yash; Malayalam title Patriot, starring both Mohanlal and Mamooty, and Telugu titles Peddi with Ram Charan and Dragon with Jr NTR.
In one of its regular insight posts, Ormax noted the upcoming clash between Dhurandhar: The Revenge and Toxic: A Fairytale For Grown-ups, both set for release on March 19, one of the biggest standoffs in the North Indian film market since Bhansali’s Bajirao Mastani went up against Shah Rukh Khan starrer Dilwale in 2015.
“Currently, Dhurandhar: The Revenge holds the edge over Toxic [the Hindi version], primarily on the strength of the franchise value built through the first film’s unqualified success, and its subsequent premiere on streaming, which has been timed perfectly to coincide with the title announcement of the second film,” said Ormax in its insight report.
“However, the main campaign for Toxic hasn’t started yet, and the film has significant headroom for growth…OCX tracking data suggests that both films have strong audience traction, and their relative share of box office on the first day will also come down to their relative release scale. We’ve seen in multiple instances that the film opening lower can go on to become the bigger film on the strength of its content.”
Deadline will be paying attention to see how this battle plays out..