2025: big-budget movies bomb at box office

Except for Sankrantiki Vasthunnam, no other movie touched the Rs 300 crore gross mark in the year 2025, shattering the hopes of many filmmakers. Though the year began on an encouraging note with Sankrantiki Vasthunnam, starring Venkatesh, doing well at the box office, the big movies that followed it came a cropper, leaving distributors in distress.

Directed by Anil Ravipudi, the family drama (Sankrantiki Vasthunnam) drew crowds to theatres in a big numbers, making cash registers ring louder at the box office.
Made with a budget of Rs 50 crore, it collected over Rs 300 crore gross.

Big-ticket ventures like Game Changer (Ram Charan), War 2 (Junior NTR), Harihara Veeramallu (Pawan Kalyan) and Kannappa (Vishnu), which were released amid much hype, misfired, incurring losses. The other films which failed to meet expectations include Mass Jathara of Ravi Teja, Kingdom of Vijay Devarakonda and Ghati (Anushka).

However, some small films, like Court, Raju weds Rambai, and Little Hearts made it big, impressing the audience, while Kubera, Mirai, Kramp, Subham, Single, Thandel, OG and Hit got an average talk.

Released in the last quarter of the year, Akhanda 2 of Balakrishna, the sequel to the big hit Akhanda, got a mixed reception and failed to ‘roar’ like its prequel.

For the fans of Chiranjeevi, Prabhas, Mahesh Babu and Allu Arjun, it was a disappointing year as no movie of their heroes was released.

With crores, spent on big movies, going down the drain in the year, the Tollywood looks to 2026 with a hope.

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This article is written by Senior Journalist Lakkoju Nagesh Babu