Powered by the stupendous run of Adiya Dhar-directed and Ranveer Singh-helmed ‘Dhurandhar’, which emerged as the highest-grossing film of the year, the Indian box office gross of Rs. 13,395 crore in 2025 became the first-ever year to cross Rs. 13,000 crore, surpassing the record held by 2023 (Rs. 12,226 crore) in the process, according to Ormax Media.

As many as 37 films crossed the Rs. 100 crore mark last year, compared to only 22 in 2024, revealed yesterday the Ormax Box Office Report 2025, which is now regarded as a collection of credible data on the domestic box office collections in India across all languages.

According to the report, 2025 was also the best-ever year for Hindi cinema, with a gross box office of Rs. 5,504 crore. Notably, 93 percent of Hindi box office collections came from original Hindi language films, with dependence on dubbed South films dropping from 31 percent in 2024 to just 7 percent in 2025.

‘Dhurandhar’ emerged as the highest-grossing film of 2025, with a gross box office of Rs. 950 crore, setting a new record as the highest-grossing Hindi language film of all time, surpassing ‘Stree 2’ (Rs. 698 crore).

International films too had a resurgent year, witnessing a strong 49 percent growth and, thereby, making 2025 the highest-grossing year for International cinema in India since the pandemic, and the second-best year of all time after 2019. The cumulative share of the four South languages dropped from 48 percent in 2024 to 44 percent in 2025, with only Kannada language showing significant growth among the four languages.

Interestingly, 2025 registered 83.2 crore (832 million) footfalls, reflecting a 6 percent decline from 2024, underscoring the continued dependence of the box office on rising average ticket prices (ATP) in recent years, which recorded its sharpest growth in the last four years, rising by 20 percent, from Rs. 134 to Rs. 161.

The ATP increase was driven by higher box office share of Hindi+International (52 percent, vis-à-vis 47 percent in 2024), which are the high ATP languages. The South Indian markets witnessed a trend of higher ticket prices for several big-ticket films, further impacting the overall ATP.

‘Dhurandhar’, ‘Kantara A Legend: Chapter-1’ and ‘Chhaava’ were the only films to surpass the Rs. 500 crore mark at the India box office. ‘Saiyaara’, ‘Coolie’ and the multilingual animated film ‘Mahavatar Narsimha’ were the other three films to gross above Rs. 300 crore.

Driven by ‘Laalo: Krishna Sada Sahaayate’ (Rs. 114 crore), which became the highest-grossing Gujarati film of all-time, Gujarati cinema witnessed a staggering 189 percent growth, from Rs. 84 crore in 2024 to Rs. 242 crore in 2025.

Marathi and Punjabi languages, according to the Ormax report, saw the steepest drop, shrinking by 46 percent and 43 percent, respectively. Assamese film ‘Roi Roi Binale’ grossed Rs. 42 crore, contributing single-handedly to the 131 percebnt growth for ‘Others’ category.

(Main image and chart courtesy Ormax Media)