Chhaava helps box office collections climb in the first six months of 2025

Business Standard

20-07-2025

At a time when the Indian film industry is struggling to attract audiences back to the silver screens with new scripts, release formats, and franchise titles, this helped push India's box office collections up 14 per cent on a year-on-year basis to Rs 5,723 crore in the January–June period, with historical action film Chhaava, based on Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj, leading as the highest-grossing movie so far this year.
With a steady flow of 17 films crossing the Rs 100 crore mark in the first six months, this year relied less on the big-ticket blockbusters, a report released by Ormax Media stated. Last year, in the same period, 10 films had crossed the Rs 100 crore mark. Vicky Kaushal starrer Chhaava minted Rs 693 crore at the domestic BO, followed by Telugu-language film Sankranthiki Vasthunam, which made Rs 222 crore at the domestic BO. Meanwhile, in the month of June, the gross collection crossed Rs 900 crore.
While the film industry struggled to fill seats in theatres, with only a few movie releases around the festive season that could attract crowds last year, a report released by Ormax Media anticipates this year will break records in terms of domestic BO collection with an overall collection of Rs 13,500 crore.
'Over the last two years, the January-June period has contributed 42 per cent to the annual box office. Applying that proportion, 2025 can be expected to close at Rs 13,500 crore, which will make it the best year ever at the India box office,' the report said. Some major movies expected to release are Kantara: Chapter 1, Avatar: Fire and Ash (third instalment in the Avatar series), War 2 (Yash Raj Films' spy universe film), and Coolie (Tamil-language action thriller starring Rajinikanth), among others.
The year started strong with Pushpa 2: The Rule continuing its theatrical run in January, followed by Maddock Films-backed Chhaava in February and Raid 2 in May, revolving around an income tax officer played by Ajay Devgn. However, the industry faced a challenging time around April end and the start of May, in northern and western regions near the border, where cinemas in select cities had to cancel night shows due to geopolitical tensions between India and Pakistan. Adding to this, some major releases like Akshay Kumar starrer Sky Force and Sikander, with Salman Khan as the lead actor, failed to perform as expected at the BO.
Aamir Khan and Genelia Deshmukh starrer Sitaare Zameen Par, which was exclusively released in theatres on June 20, came in third position in terms of gross domestic BO collection with Rs 201 crore. At Rs 200 crore of domestic BO collection was Housefull 5, a murder mystery comedy, which experimented with having two different endings of the film. The second part of the film, Raid, starring Riteish Deshmukh as a corrupt political figure, minted Rs 199 crore at the BO.
In terms of linguistic contributions to the domestic BO, Hindi-language led with 40 per cent of the share in the January-June period, in line with last year. This was followed by Telugu-language and Tamil-language at 20 per cent and 15 per cent, respectively. On the back of several high-profile Hollywood releases, Hollywood's contribution to the domestic BO returned a double-digit share after three years, having last crossed the 10 per cent mark in 2022, the report added.