The year gone by witnessed a return to cinema after being hit by the pandemic for two years and it turned out to be a reasonable year helped out by the dubbed/bilingual South films. The collections of the 55 odd films to collect 1 crore nett or over at the box office including the ones from the South will be around 2875 crore.

The tally in 2019 for 65 films which hit 1 crore nett or more was 4175 crore so its a drop of 31% which is pretty good coming out of a pandemic. The issue here is that around 900 crore nett has come from dubbed/bilingual films so without this the number goes below 2000 crore and it is a 50% drop. The box office in 2017 and 2018 was also aided by South films (BAAHUBALI 2: THE CONCLUSION, 2.0) but not to this extent.

2017 and 2018 saw one huge South release in each year while in 2022 there were two (RRR, KGF - CHAPTER 2) and also a surprise SUPER HIT film with KANTARA. It remains to be seen how the South contribution goes in 2023 but the 2000 crore contributed by original Hindi content must go up and it will looking at the line up for 2023.

In 2019, there was over 4000 crore nett (not including SAAHO) which came from original Hindi content and it is about getting back to these levels or at least close. This figure may well happen in 2023 but probably with support of South as content of original Hindi  medium/smaller films is unlikely to be such that it can get numbers. But this should change post 2023 as the smaller/medium films started now should be dictated by what the audience wants post pandemic. In 2022, most of these films were similar to pre pandemic while 2023 is also likely to see some backlog of those pre pandemic films.

It is an important year always but there will be extra pressure on 2023 as the line up is strong and so, performance is a must. Irrespective of performance, there were only two genuine big films in 2022 - LAAL SINGH CHADDHA and BRAHMASTRA - but 2023 will see five or six and that itself should make a huge difference.