Bollywood roars back: Gross box office may breach ₹12k cr in 2023

Hindi films contributed 44% to India's annual gross box office collections, up from 33% in 2022, and 19% in 2021

- Lata Jha

• According to a BookMyShow report, 1,648,508 people flocked to cinemas, each enjoying at least six movies this year

After a prolonged post-covid box office winter, 2023 was a year of comebacks for Bollywood, with several films breaking collection records, and setting new benchmarks, silencing critics who had blamed elitist urban narratives for its supposed downfall.

Jawan ( ₹643.87 crore), Pathaan ( ₹543.05 crore), Gadar 2 ( ₹525.45 crore) and Animal ( ₹537.17 crore at last count) have surpassed the ₹500 crore mark in the domestic market alone, beating the record collections of ₹387.38 crore by Aamir Khan’s Dangal (the highest grossing Hindi language film until January 2023) released in 2016 by a fair margin.

Gross box office collections for the year across languages might exceed ₹12,000 crore. A flurry of tent-pole titles scheduled for the last week of December could help break the 2019 box office record of ₹10,948 crore.