India’s movie industry is booming! The first half of 2024 brought in over $600 million at the box office. That’s pretty awesome, and even better than last year.
Leading the way was the sci-fi flick “Kalki 2898 AD.” It made an impressive $92 million all on its own! No wonder – the movie about a future robot uprising looked pretty awesome. It really helped boost June’s numbers to over $144 million.
Coming in close behind was “Fighter,” the air force action movie in Hindi. It took in $29 million. Not far behind that was “Hanu-Man,” a Telugu take on mythology and superheroes that made $28 million.
Some other big hits made the top ten list too. “Shaitaan,” a Bollywood suspense thriller scared up $21 million. “Manjummel Boys,” a emotional Malayalam film about survival, netted $20 million. And “Guntur Kaaram,” a Telugu action drama, fought its way to $17 million.
The only non-Indian film on the list was “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.” Even with being in a different language, it still captured $16 million from Indian audiences. After that was the Bollywood horror comedy “Munjya” with $14 million and two dramas in Malayalam, “The Goat Life” and “Aavesham,” that each made over $12 million.
The top ten showing films in lots of different languages, from Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam and more. It’s cool to see how movies are resonating with people all across India now. One change though – unlike last year, there weren’t any Tamil films this time in the top ranking movies.
The first part of 2024 also brought some shifting trends. Malayalam films from Kerala really took off, tripling their total dollars from before. While Bollywood was still the top market at 35%, that was down a bit from 37% last year. Telugu cinema from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana stayed steady. Both Tamil and American films saw declines compared to 2023.
If the last half of the year continues this momentum, 2024 may end up matching or even beating last year’s record-breaking total of $1.4 billion. With buzz building for tentpole releases like “Pushpa 2,” “Stree 2,” “Singham Again” and more, it should be an exciting time to be at the movies!
