DHURANDHAR THE REVENGE finally hit the 1000 crore nett mark in its eighth weekend. Although this number would have been declared weeks ago, but that side of the box office has become a bit of a joke now. Actually, makers cant be blamed as expectations are crazy and then you have these posters from South films which makes a mockery of it all. For Hindi when you have PUSHPA 2 - THE RULE type reporting, it was a given that it would go haywire and rest would follow the same pattern.

Irrespective of this, the film is actually the first 1000 crore nett film ever in Hindi. The first original Hindi film ever to hit 1 crore nett was AAN in 1952 and 74 years later its 1000 crore with DHURANDHAR THE REVENGE. The other big benchmarks like these were 10 crore nett in 1975 by SHOLAY and 100 crore nett by GHAJINI in 2008. The 10000 crore nett mark will be hit one day also but we will not be alive to see that.

The film is the biggest blockbuster for Hindi cinema since GADAR - EK PREM KATHA in 2001. The film is being put up there with the likes of SHOLAY and GADAR but only time well. The film is not as big as those and more importantly those two passed the test of time like very few before. SHOLAY was remained a theatrical force many years after release and there is not much to say about GADAR (2001) as the results of GADAR 2 released 22 years later say it all. Even if it said what DHURANDHAR THE REVENGE has done today is similar to what SHOLAY did 1975 or GADAR did in 2001, the harder part is to remain huge with another generation all together in years to come. This is what very few films manage.

The collections of DHURANDHAR THE REVENGE (Hindi) are as follows.

Week One - 5,90,36,00,000

Week Two - 2,28,97,00,000

Week Three - 95,45,00,000

Week Four - 49,33,00,000

Week Five - 18,32,00,000 apprx

Week Six - 11,37,00,000

Week Seven - 5,35,00,000

Week Eight - 2,50,00,000 apprx (3 days)

KRISHNAVATARAM PART 1: THE HEART collected 6.50 crore nett over the weekend which are fair collections for its face value but not commensurate with the costs of the film. The trend was good as it had strong growth on Saturday and consolidated on Sunday but it was at low levels. The film needs to break out over the weekdays and going into week two with a chance of collecting better than the first week.

The film was released in Tamil and Telugu on Saturday and did fair in Telugu as was it just a 30 cinema release. Yet, it picked up 13 lakhs nett with decent occupancy on the minimal shows it had. Tamil version could not collect.

The collections of KRISHNAVATARAM PART 1: THE HEART (Hindi) till date are as follows.

Thursday - 40,00,000 apprx

Friday - 1,00,00,000 apprx

Saturday - 2,00,00,000 apprx

Sunday - 3,00,00,000 apprx

DAADI KI SHAADI managed show good growth on Sunday which was sort of expected considering the zone of the film but overall collections are low. The Sunday collections mean it could hold at low levels over the weekdays. The film collected 3.25 crore nett over the weekend.

The collections of DAADI KI SHAADI till date are as follows.

Friday - 60,00,000 apprx

Saturday - 1,00,00,000 apprx

Sunday - 1,65,00,000 apprx

BHOOTH BANGLA had another solid weekend as it collected 7 crore nett and heads for a comfortable double digit week. The film has held up really well over the last few weeks considering the film dropped 45% on the first Monday. It did not look like the film could reach 150 crore nett at that time but now it will cross the coveted mark comfortably.

The film dropped under 50% over the last two weeks showing a good trend. The collections stand at 144 crore nett and the weekdays will show healthy numbers which should take it to around 148 crore nett by the end of the week. The flow of releases will start then but BHOOTH BANGLA will still hang around to finish at 150 crore nett plus.

The collections of BHOOTH BANGLA till date are as follows.

Friday - 1,25,00,000 apprx

Saturday - 2,50,00,000 apprx

Sunday - 3,25,00,000 apprx

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BHOOTH BANGLA was released a few weeks ago and has done well and its basically the Delhi/UP market which has taken it to HIT status. When the film was released, it was not doing too well here, but it has sustained superbly over the last few weeks. It did not look like the film could cross the business of JOLLY LLB 3 initially but now after five weeks, it is on course to do so.

BHOOTH BANGLA has picked up almost 35 crore nett in Delhi/UP so far which is roughly the business of JOLLY LLB 3 in the circuit and there is still more to come. The films had a big difference in the first week as JOLLY LLB 3 did 21.27 crore nett while BHOOTH BANGLA was 17.69 crore nett and that was including the paid previews.

BHOOTH BANGLA will now do around 37-38 crore nett in the circuit which is going to be more than double the first week collections. This will not be happening in any other circuit or even at an all India level.

The business of Bhooth Bangla and JOLLY LLB 3 in Delhi/UP is as follows.

Jolly LLB 3 - 21,27,00,000

Bhooth Bangla - 17,69,00,000

Jolly LLB 3 - 9,25,00,000

Bhooth Bangla - 9,48,00,000

Jolly LLB 3 - 2,41,00,000

Bhooth Bangla - 5,50,00,000

Jolly LLB 3 - 1,22,00,000

Bhooth Bangla - 2,30,00,000 (5 days)

Jolly LLB 3 - 1,13,00,000

Bhooth Bangla - N/A

Before ‘The Odyssey’ arrives in cinemas on July 17, it may be bringing Mumbai an evening to remember. Word is that acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan may host a grand India première of his epic adventure drama in Mumbai. Universal Pictures, which has co-produced the highly anticipated movie, is said to be in early discussions to have the event in Mumbai in mid-July, with cast members Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, and Tom Holland expected to be in attendance.

While it hasn’t been officially confirmed yet, industry chatter suggests the studio is exploring venue options in the city and has initiated preliminary conversations with Indian partners regarding logistics, security, and venue planning.

A source told mid-day, “The heads at Universal Pictures know that Nolan has a passionate fanbase in India. The idea is to create an event that feels global, but still uniquely Mumbai. There have been conversations around keeping it curated and high-profile. Right now, everything, especially travel plan, depends on the West Asia conflict.” 

An official announcement from Universal Pictures is expected closer to the film’s marketing launch window.

mid-day reached out to Universal Pictures, which declined to comment.

In March 2018, filmmaker Christopher Nolan of ‘The Dark Knight’ trilogy fame visited India to advocate the preservation of photochemical film. The director made an appearance at IMAX Wadala, where his movie ‘Dunkirk’ was being screened.

Food, according to Hansal Mehta, is one of the strongest places memory lives. And Khana Dil Se, his way of holding on to his family’s memories. “I realized the recipes my mother, aunt, and father-in-law made would slip away if no one held on to them,” reflected the filmmaker.

The filmmaker, known for politically charged dramas like Shahid, Scam 1992 and Scoop, says food became another way to talk about memory. “Food is one of the last places memory lives,” he says, adding that the pilot episode is an attempt to “find and reinvent” his mother’s Undhiyu. 

So, Mehta went back to the kitchen for Khana Dil Se, just as he had done in the early 1990s when he directed the genre-defining cooking show, Khana Khazana. But this time, there’s a new ingredient — Artificial Intelligence (AI). Agreeing that filmmakers’ concerns about AI replacing artistes are legitimate, he asserted that AI is not at the forefront of his show.

“The families and their recipes are what the show is about. AI is a tool that helps me tell that story. Working the conventional way means animation budgets, period reconstructions, and location shoots. These costs put this kind of show out of reach for almost everyone. AI lets me do that visual work at a fraction of the time and cost.” 

Even as we have seen a surge in competitive cooking shows, meaningful culinary storytelling is absent from Indian platforms. That’s a void Mehta hopes to fill with his YouTube show. 

“We have travel-and-eat shows, we have competitions, we have celebrity chef formats. What we don’t have are enough shows documenting our recipes. Somebody Feed Phil is a wonderful show, but it’s an outsider’s affectionate gaze, and that’s not the same as an insider’s archive. India has, conservatively, a few hundred distinct culinary traditions, most of them undocumented in any serious filmed form. The platforms might not be wrong that conventional food shows have lost captivity. They’re wrong about why. Audiences haven’t stopped caring about food. They’ve stopped accepting cooking shows that have become more like a sports league than a kitchen. The plan is to make something good enough that the question of where it sits primary network, streaming, somewhere we haven’t thought of yet becomes a happy problem rather than a strategic one. I’ve been around long enough to know you can’t reverse-engineer a hit by deciding the platform first. You make the show. If it’s the show people are talking about, the platforms come. I’d love for ambitious, archival, slow-cooked food television to find its way back to the kind of mainstream audience Khana Khazana once had. There’s a generation that grew up watching Sanjeev on Sunday mornings and is now raising children of their own. I think they’re ready for a food show that takes them, and the food, seriously again."

The show also leans heavily into the politics of food, something Mehta says was inspired by Anthony Bourdain’s worldview. “Bourdain was right about nearly everything, and food being political was the most important thing he kept saying. Take Gosht Nihari. We tend to think of nihari as a single dish, Lucknow’s, Delhi’s, or Karachi’s. It’s actually three different preparations across a border that didn’t exist when the recipe was written. Nihari was perhaps born in 18th-century Shahjahanabad as labourers’ food. A pot left on dying embers overnight so it would be ready before fajr prayer. The Nawabs of Awadh refined it in Lucknow, perfumed it with kewra and rose. After Partition, it crossed into Karachi in the mouths of refugees and became a national obsession in Pakistan. Three cities, three versions of a single dish, separated by a line on a map. Most of the great Indian dishes are working-class food that the courts later adopted, not the other way around. Nihari belonged to soldiers and dyers before it belonged to Nawabs. Undhiyu was farmers’ communal food, with multiple Patidar and Koli families contributing vegetables to a single pot buried in a shared field at Uttarayan. Butter chicken, which will be featured in our third episode, was invented by Punjabi refugees in 1947 Delhi who had to figure out what to do with leftover tandoori chicken. Almost every dish we celebrate as heritage was, at some point, a survival strategy."

What’s next for Akshaye Khanna after the blockbuster Dhurandhar (2025)? Trust the actor to take a departure from mainstream Hindi actioners and try his hand at something new. That explains his maiden Telugu film, Mahakali, which also marks his first mythological superhero action movie. Khanna — who plays Asura guru Shukracharya, at odds with the protagonist essayed by Bhoomi Shetty — recently wrapped up his portions in the Puja Aparna Kolluru-directed movie.

It turns out the actor was drawn to the film’s ambitious world, more so to his character’s complexity. Excited about joining the Prasanth Varma Cinematic Universe, he began shooting for Mahakali in May 2025.

A source told mid-day, “Choosy as ever, Akshaye agreed to play Asura guru Shukracharya as he was intrigued by the role. In Hindu mythology, he was the revered teacher of the Asuras and advised them in their battles against the gods. His primary role was to revive the dead demons, while Maa Kali’s role was to destroy the demon army. That put them on opposite sides of the conflict. Shukracharya is considered a knowledgeable sage rather than inherently evil. He is a misunderstood character in Indian scriptures, and Akshaye loved that complexity.”

The unit shot an extensive schedule from February to April this year. Now, they are shooting the last leg in Kolkata. “On May 9, the team filmed near the Dakshineswar Temple. Principal photography will be completed by July,” added the source.

Soon after Pati Patni Aur Woh Do’s trailer dropped online, an unexpected discourse surrounded director Mudassar Aziz — that his movies normalise infidelity. To him, the dialogue is welcome, as long as it comes from a place of fairness. “This is my seventh film. Never before have I made a film that legitimizes infidelity,” began Aziz.

The May 15 release revolves around Ayushmann Khurrana’s character’s dalliances with two women, portrayed by Sara Ali Khan and Rakul Preet Singh, while his wife grows suspicious. Pointing to his body of work, Aziz said that he feels misunderstood when such criticism comes up.

“Both Ayushmann and I have a history of doing films that don’t approach gender politics in a skewed way. In Pati Patni Aur Woh [2019], the husband is faced with the consequences of his actions when his wife and girlfriend join forces. In Happy Bhag Jayegi [2016], I created a protagonist who chooses her partner. Women in my films have always had agency. They are never passive recipients of male behaviour.” For him, the film’s emotional core doesn’t lie in betrayal.

It took the director some time to convince Khurrana. Aziz shared, “We had three rounds of narrations. After the first time, Ayushmann said he wanted to hear it again. Before the third narration was over, he was having so much fun that he said, ‘Let’s do it.’ He comes with a history of subjects that are difficult. He is never afraid of complicated emotional space.”

Few Hindi movies have made an impact at the box office in the post-pandemic landscape. According to Mudassar Aziz, the audience today seeks conviction over all else — a lesson he learnt from his friend, filmmaker Mohit Suri. Aziz shared, “Nobody expected ‘Saiyaara’ [2025] to blow up the way it did, but Mohit believed in it completely. He recently said in an interview that when he was making films with conviction, commerce followed. But when he started chasing the latter, he lost both.”

Comic Con Mumbai kicked off over the weekend, bringing together immersive booths, creators, fans, and cosplayers in a vibrant celebration of pop culture. Babil, who recently returned to movies after a brief hiatus, made a special appearance for BT and soaked in anime culture’s soaring popularity among young fans. Warm and unassuming, Babil happily posed for selfies and responded to every fan who enthusiastically spoke about their love for his father, the late Irrfan.

Babil’s connection with superheroes is also deeply personal because of his father’s association with The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), which starred Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker. Speaking about it fondly, he said, “We know from the Spider-Verse that there’s an Indian Spider-Man. Seeing my dad in the film was surreal, but not as crazy as him telling Christopher Nolan he didn’t have dates for Interstellar because he was already committed to another wonderful film – Piku with Shoojit Sircar.”

He added, “Spider-Man is my favourite superhero because he’s human in a very real way. He goes through all the emotions of being a kid growing up and coming to terms with being handed this immensely heavy responsibility and legacy. I relate to that deeply.”

Babil believes the enduring appeal of superhero films lies in the hope they inspire. “I’m not sure if good always triumphs over evil,” he reflected, “but the fact that superhero films make you hope for that is enough to keep you going and striving towards the right path.”

While superhero cinema is often critiqued for relying heavily on CGI spectacle, Babil sees its value differently. “Sometimes, it’s not about how technically sound or inventive a film is,” he said, “Sometimes, it’s simply about the feeling it leaves you with – and superhero films make you want to become a better version of yourself. I think that matters.”

Admiring the passion and effort behind cosplayers’ creations, Babil said, “To believe your way into creating worlds and characters is what I do for a living as an actor, so I feel at home at Comic Con. There’s also a certain bravery and rebelliousness to cosplay. It’s about standing up against the rigidity of reality and refusing to let go of imagination – and all the magic that comes with it. Sometimes, our souls need a little magic.”

For the actor, superheroes represent more than pop-culture. He revealed, “I was always that weird kid no one spoke to. It was difficult for me to make friends. I was often bullied, and for any child going through that kind of loneliness, superheroes and the imagination that came with them became the friends I desperately wanted. They created an inner world for me where resilience became my superpower.”

Anshuman Jha’s Lakadbaggha 2: The Monkey Business, the sequel to the 2023 action thriller Lakadbaggha, is set for an exclusive market screening at the Marché du Film as it gears up for international distribution ahead of its official world premiere later this year. Set against the backdrop of Indonesia, the India-Indonesia co-production combines martial arts action with an environmental message centred around wildlife trafficking.

The film also shines a light on the critically endangered Yaki monkey, whose population has reportedly declined from nearly 50,000 in the 1990s to fewer than 5,000 in 2025 due to habitat destruction and illegal wildlife trade.

Speaking about the vision behind the sequel, Anshuman says, “Lakadbaggha 1 was rooted in my love for dogs, while Lakadbaggha 2: The Monkey Business widens that lens to all animals. Animals are going extinct because humanity is going extinct. We wanted to elevate the action, not just in intensity but also in meaning, because beyond the fights lies the question of what you stand for. Marché du Film gives us the platform to take this story to global audiences who value cinema that engages both the heart and the mind.”

Opening up about how the sequel expands the world of the franchise, he says, “The Lakadbaggha franchise has always been my love letter to animals and a homage to Bruce Lee. With Lakadbaggha 2: The Monkey Business, we’ve gone bigger, darker and more international. The story moves into the brutal underworld of illegal wildlife trafficking in Southeast Asia, centred around the critically endangered Yaki monkey. The action is larger, but the emotional and environmental stakes are even more real.”

For Anshuman, the screening at Marché du Film marks a significant milestone for an independent Indian action franchise.

He shares, “Marché du Film Cannes is the biggest film market in the world, so showcasing Lakadbaggha 2 there before its world premiere is a massive opportunity. We’re hoping to take an Indian martial arts franchise to global players like Toho, Well Go USA and Kino, who have backed internationally recognised action franchises such as Ip Man, Train to Busan and Godzilla Minus One. For an independent Indian action franchise, this is rare territory, and I’m deeply grateful to the Creative Europe MEDIA Programme and Webfilmland Germany for believing in the film and supporting it at Cannes.”

Sharing how the Indo-Indonesian collaboration came together, he says, “It began with the script. Writer Sourav Ghosh had set the story in Indonesia, and in 2023, I watched the Indonesian film Sara. I reached out to the team behind it, which led to Matta Cinema coming on board. From there, the collaboration grew organically with support from Indonesia’s Ministry of Tourism and Ministry of Creative Economy. We were especially excited to showcase West Java, a stunning part of Indonesia that global audiences haven’t really seen on screen in this way before.”

The Indian film industry is firmly reverting to a theatrical-first release model as streaming platforms tighten spending and studios increasingly prioritise box office revenues, according to industry executives.

The shift marks a decisive move away from the post-pandemic phase, when several films premiered directly on OTT platforms. Today, films are typically arriving on streaming services around eight weeks after their theatrical release.

“Movies are reaching OTT platforms much later after their theatrical release. So OTT is no longer a substitute. In fact, it never really was,” said Ajay Bijli, managing director of PVR INOX, adding that box office performance continues to act as a benchmark for how OTT deals are structured.

According to a FICCI-EY report, while the total number of films released on OTT platforms remained steady at 500, direct-to-digital premieres fell 50% from 60 in 2024 to 30 in 2025. In contrast, 470 films released in theatres first before arriving on OTT platforms, compared with 440 in 2024.

Gross box office collections rose 14% from Rs 11,400 crore in 2024 to Rs 13,000 crore in 2025, marking an all-time high for the sector.

“Theatrical performance, word of mouth, and box office collections have a very positive impact on viewership when a film arrives on OTT platforms after eight weeks,” Bijli added.

While theatrical revenues surged, demand for digital licensing weakened amid consolidation and tighter spending by streaming platforms. The merger of Disney+ Hotstar and JioCinema into JioHotstar further reduced movie acquisitions compared with the post-pandemic years. As a result, digital and OTT revenues for films declined 7% to Rs 2,900 crore in 2025, according to FICCI-EY estimates.

For streaming platforms without cricket rights, theatrical films continue to remain a key subscriber acquisition driver, with cricket and Bollywood still the two biggest tentpole content categories.

At the same time, there is growing acknowledgement within the industry about the need to build a sustainable economic model that benefits all stakeholders.

During a recent interaction, Gaurav Gandhi, Vice President, Asia-Pacific and ANZ, Prime Video said consolidation in the streaming market has reduced both content investments and overall output. With fewer buyers acquiring video content, demand has softened, leading to a natural demand-supply correction and rationalisation in pricing and spending.

“There has been some rationalisation of demand. But there is also an acknowledgement across the industry that while we have to grow, some of these costs are not tenable. Therefore, people have made choices. I think those choices have taken multiple forms. You don't necessarily buy what doesn’t work for you, but you can also build your own,” Gandhi said.

He added that Prime Video India has expanded from co-productions after the pandemic to creating original films while continuing to acquire film rights. Reflecting the renewed push towards theatres, Prime Video recently unveiled a five-film theatrical slate under Amazon MGM Studios India.