With a blockbuster in Dhurandhar, the Ranveer- Singh starrer that has raked in more than Rs 1,000 crore in worldwide collections, Bollywood is set to end 2025 on a high note. Theatrical revenues are now tipped to top 12,500 crore, topping 2023’s all-time high revenues of Rs 12,200 crore.
Indeed, 2025 has been good for Bollywood despite the strong challenge from regional films, Over The Top (OTT) content and foreign films.
The ‘Dhurandhar’ Phenomenon
Dhurandhar has had as solid run so far. The Aditya Dhar directed film’s worldwide collections have hit Rs 1,006.7 crore, after notching up domestic collections of Rs 668.80 crore by Day 21.
The film has already crossed the lifetime worldwide box office collections for the Rajinikanth-starrer Jailer (2023), estimated at ₹650 crore. It is fast closing in on Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan (2023), which logged ₹1,055 crore worldwide.
Besides Dhurandhar at least five Hindi-language films (Chhaava, Saiyaara, War 2, Housefull 5) have found place among the list of top ten highest-grossing Indian movies of 2025.
Dhurandhar, released across about 1,200 screens with more than 3,700 daily shows, opened at Rs 32 crore and crossed Rs 118 crore in its first week. “Content is the single-biggest driver of theatrical success,” Gautam Dutta, CEO, revenue and operations, PVR INOX Ltd told FE.
Weekly business held at around Rs 32 crore, with footfalls rising from around 28 lakh in its first week to over 31 lakh in the second. “This highlights the film’s strong pull,” Dutta says, placing Dhurandhar alongside movies such as Kantara: A Legend Chapter 1, which, at Rs 700 crore-plus, is the the highest-grossing Indian film of 2025, and Avatar: The Way of Water.
Content vs. Pricing
These numbers have also raised hopes of a revival of movie attendance, which has been erratic for some years, with some reports even suggesting that theatre footfalls have crashed 50% between 2018 and 2025. Industry insiders including PVR INOX’s Sanjeev Kumar Bijli, have said time and again that a weak content pipeline, and not high ticket prices, has been the primary reason for low footfalls in recent years.
Film business analyst and movie critic Taran Adarsh says audience loyalty has always been conditional on quality rather than habit and adds that viewers will return to cinema halls in large numbers only if they get “good cinema.
At the same time, film critic and writer Saibal Chatterjee cautions one should not look at Dhurandhar numbers as a sign of a multiplex resurgence. When you have big films, people will come back, he says, but rues that multiplex pricing has narrowed the audience base to urban, upper-middle-class consumers.