At a time when the big budget multi-starer movies were struggling to break even at the Indian box office, some small budget movies from regional language industries made it big in 2024.

While the CUFS (cinematic universe, franchise, sequel) segment was the mainstay for Hindi industry’s growth during the year, content was the main pillar for a regional industry like Malayalam.

Six of the top 10 movies across all language versions in gross box office collection (GBOC) belonged to the CUFS category. This included ‘Pushpa 2: The Rule’, ‘Kalki 2898 AD’, ‘Stree 2’, ‘Devara Part-1’, ‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3’ and ‘Singham Again’.

Of these, ‘Pushpa 2: The Rule’, ‘Kalki 2898 AD’, and ‘Devara Part-1’ – which were primarily made in Telugu language – also saw pan-India release in multiple languages.

According to the movie trade website Sacnilk, the gross box office collection (GBOC) of the Indian movie industry was ₹11,672.97 crore from 1,493 movies in 2024. The net box office collection (NBOC) was at ₹9,881.34 crore during the year.

Only six movies from the Hindi movie industry, popularly known as Bollywood, managed to cross ₹100 crore mark in GBOC during the year. Of them, ‘Stree 2’, ‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3’ and ‘Singham Again’, which belonged to the CUFS category, managed to gross over ₹290 crore. ‘Fighter’, ‘Shaitan’ and ‘Munjiya’ were the other three that grossed over ₹100 crore in box office.

Other Hindi movies such as ‘Article 370’, ‘Bad Newz’ and ‘Crew’ performed decently well at the box office during 2024.

However, movies from Malayalam language were a real surprise for the Indian movie industry in 2024.

Movies based on real-life survival incidents managed to make a big impact in the content-driven Malayalam industry. ‘Manjummel Boys’, an adventure survival drama that was based on a real-life story, managed to cross GBOC of ₹170 crore. Another movie in the adventure survival drama ‘Aadujeevitham – The Goat Life’, which again was based on a real-life story, also grossed nearly ₹100 crore in GBOC. The Onam release ‘A.R.M’ or ‘Aayante Randam Moshanam’ (action adventure) emerged as one of the major grossers in Malayalam industry.

Apart from adventure survival genre movies, those from other genres such as action (Aavesham), romance (Premalu), mystery (Kishkindha Kaandam), and comedy (Guruvayoor Ambalanadayil) also hit big at the box office. In fact, a majority of them were small-budget movies when compared to some movies from Bollywood.

As mentioned earlier, the big budget movies made it big both on Telugu and pan-India movie landscape. Apart from them, other movies such as ‘Hanu-man’ and ‘Saripodhaa Sanivaaram’ were the other major winners at the Telugu box office in 2024.

The Vijay-starrer ‘GOAT (The Greatest of All Time)’ from Tamil industry reached nearly ₹300 crore in GBOC in 2024. Amaran, in the biographical action genre, emerged as another blockbuster from the Tamil industry. Other Tamil movies such as ‘Maharaja’ and ‘Meiyazhagan’ performed decently at the box office.

As far as Kannada industry is concerned, the first half of 2024 was not encouraging. However, the releases in the second half of the year, which include ‘Krishnam Pranaya Sakhi’ and ‘Bheema’ (August release) and ‘UI’ and ‘Max’ (December release) provided a much-needed lifeline to the Kannada movie industry.

With titles such as ‘Kantara Chapter 1’, ‘War 2’, ‘Toxic’, ‘Sikandar’, ‘Chhaava’, ‘Thalapathy 69’, ‘Coolie’, and ‘Raaja Saab’ in the pipeline across various languages, viewers are expecting a better movie experience in 2025.