India box office for first six months 15% lower than 2022

Pathaan, the top film in the first half of 2023, contributes over 13% of the overall collections.

The cumulative box office for Jan-Jun releases stands at ₹4,868 Cr, which is 15% lower than the same period in 2022. At this rate, 2023 is expected to end at ₹9,736 Cr, which will be 8% lower than the annual 2022 box office of ₹10,637 Cr.

As per the The India Box Office Report that tracks the performance of the various films released every month at the Indian (domestic) box office. The box office crossed the ₹1,000 Cr threshold in June 2023, aided by the strong opening of multi-lingual Adipurush, and creditable box office performance of Zara Hatke Zara Bachke (Hindi), Carry On Jatta 3 (Punjabi), Baipan Bhaari Deva (Marathi) and Maamannan (Tamil).

This makes June 2023 the second-best month of the year so far at the box office, behind January, which was driven by the exceptional box office performance of Pathaan.

The all-time record is held by 2019, which closed at ₹10,948 Cr, followed by 2022, which is the only other year when the ₹10,000 Cr mark was surpassed. If 2023 crosses that mark, two back-to-back years higher than ₹10,000 Cr will be a definitive confirmation that Indian box office is alive and kicking, even though the kind of films that are delivering may have changed since the pandemic.

January release Pathaan is the top film in the first half of 2023, with its box office being almost double of the second-highest grosser of the year. Pathaan alone has contributed over 13% of the overall collections thus far in the year. Adipurush, despite multiple controversies, and poor audience likability, takes the second spot, on the strength of its huge opening in Telugu and Hindi markets. Fast X is the only Hollywood film to feature in top 10 films list at the end of June 2023.

For language share calculation, language-wise box office of films releasing in multiple languages is assigned to the corresponding language. However, for Hollywood, the data for all languages is reported under the language head ‘Hollywood’.

The success of K.G.F: Chapter 2 and RRR resulted in the combined language share of the four South Indian languages being 50% in 2022, with Hindi being only 33% (including a sizeable contribution from dubbed versions of the two films mentioned above). In 2023 so far, Hindi language's share has gone up to 37%, while the South languages share has dropped from 50% to 44%, largely because of a steep drop in Kannada language's share, from 8% (2022) to 2% (Jan-Jun 2023).