The Hindi cinema suffered immensely in 2022 as several biggies performed very poorly. At the same time, several films of the South were dubbed in Hindi and did exceptional business. This was also a time when the ‘Boycott Bollywood’ moment was being peddled on social media by vested interests. All these trolls got the jolt of their lives as Bollywood bounced back in 2023 and how. In fact, the ‘Boycott Bollywood’ movement died a quick death when the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Pathaan took a historic opening.
It has now come to light that Hindi cinema had a box office share of nearly 44% in 2023, up by approx. 33% a year before. Telugu and Tamil cinema, meanwhile, had a share of 19 and 16% respectively. Both grew by just 6% and 14% while Bollywood grew by more than 50%.
Hindi cinema also saw its best-ever year, with a gross box office of Rs. 5,380 cr, crossing the Rs. 5,000 cr. mark for the first time. Hindi cinema’s box office share (44%) reached the pre-pandemic level of 44%, up from 33% in 2022. While Tamil & Telugu languages held on to their share, Hollywood & Kannada cinema lost their share compared to 2022, moving down from 12% to 9%, and 8% to 3%, respectively.
In 2022, the total gross domestic collections of films in all languages was Rs. 10,630 crores. This included Rs. 3,510 crores from Hindi films, Rs. 2,140 crores from Telugu and Rs. 1,720 crores from Tamil movies. In 2023, the total collections of India jumped to a historic high of Rs. 12,230 crores. Out of this, Rs. 5,385 crores were contributed by Hindi films while Rs. 2,260 crores and Rs. 1,955 crores came from Telugu and Tamil cinema respectively. Hindi & Punjabi cinema have grown by more than 50%. Tamil is the only other major language to see double digit growth. After its best-ever year in 2022, Kannada cinema saw a steep decline of 61% in its gross BO in 2023.
What helped Bollywood were the multiple Rs. 500 crore plus grossers. Pathaan was the first one to do so followed by Sunny Deol-starrer Gadar 2, Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Jawan and Ranbir Kapoor-starrer Animal. Films like Salman Khan-starrer Tiger 3, the controversial fare The Kerala Story, Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Dunki etc, too, added to the Bollywood’s share. The South industries, meanwhile, only had three films with super-impressive collections, namely Prabhas-starrer Salaar: Part 1 – Ceasefire in Telugu and Thalapathy Vijay-starrer Leo and Rajinikanth-starrer Jailer in Tamil.
Box Office Share by Language for the year 2023
Hindi - 44%
Telugu - 19%
Tamil - 16%
Hollywood* - 9%
Malayalam - 5%
Kannada - 3%
Others - 5%
*Hollywood includes all language versions
Source: The Ormax Box Office Report 2023
