Despite massive budgets and star-studded casts, several major Indian releases this year struggled to recover their investment. From pan-India spectacles to festive superstar films, 2024 2025 turned out to be a year of high stakes, and even higher losses.
The year has been hard for big-scale Indian films, with highly anticipated titles failing to meet expectations despite massive budgets, star power, and aggressive promotions.
From pan-India movies to superstar-led festive releases, the box office has proven unpredictable. Even films backed by renowned directors, leading actors, and major production houses couldn’t escape the slowdown.
War 2 ran in theatres for a little over five weeks, just before it was released on OTT. In that time, it earned Rs 236 crore net in India. This included an underwhelming Rs 178 crore in Hindi and a disastrous Rs 57 crore net in Telugu. According to Sacnilk, War 2 sold 1.2 crore tickets domestically. Trade pundits estimate the film sold over 2 million tickets in the overseas markets as well. This is largely because of the film’s high landing cost and scale in comparison with other big releases. As per sources, War 2 had a landing cost of Rs 400 crore, which meant that it needed to gross over Rs 650-700 crore worldwide to be a box office success. However, in the end, the film managed just about half of that.
Game Changer was reportedly mounted on a budget of Rs 400 crore. Some reports claimed the figure was higher, even mentioning Rs 500 crore. However, sources say that the Rs 400-crore figure is more accurate, even though the exact budget is a closely guarded secret. What is not secretive is that the makers did spend an extravagant amount on the songs. The film's producer, Dil Raju, confirmed the astronomical amount spent on the songs at the film's trailer launch press meet in Mumbai in January. But its eventual worldwide box office collection after a tapering five-week run remained ₹186 crore. For a pan-India release mounted on a massive budget, it is underwhelming, to say the least.
Sikandar earned Rs 26 crore on its opening day. In contrast, Salman's Bharat had earned Rs 42 crore on its opening in 2019. Even Race 3, one of his weakest releases, had earned Rs 29 crore on day one just before Eid. The only Salman film that fared worse on Eid was Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan, which earned just Rs 13 crore on opening day in 2023. To sum it up, Sikandar is not Salman's worst-faring film on Eid but it is closer to the bottom than it is to the top. The budget of the film was Rs 180 crore and the total collection was just Rs 184.6 crore.
Sonu Sood's film collected Rs 2.4 crore on the opening day. After this, the decline in the film's earnings started. Sonu Sood's film could not win at the box office even on the holiday. According to the report of Sacnilk, Sonu Sood's Fateh film collected Rs 19.05 crore in total while the budget was Rs 40 crore.
Thug Life, the much-hyped collaboration between Kamal Haasan and Mani Ratnam, is struggling at the box office and has failed to resonate with audiences, especially in Telugu states. But with a budget of Rs 280 crore it only earned Rs 97.25 crore which is a major disappointment.
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