Domestic gross box office collection drops 15% in H1 to Rs 4,868 crore: Ormax Report

Ormax Report states that Pathaan was the top film in the first half of 2023, contributing over 13% of the overall collections thus far in the year.

The Ormax Report called 'The India Box Office,' tracks the performance of various films released every month at the Indian (domestic) box office. In this mid-year edition, the report looks at the overall performance of the Indian box office in the six-month period, from January to June 2023. Below are the findings of the report.

Cumulative Box Office: Jan-Jun 2022 

The box office crossed the ₹1,000 Crore threshold in June 2023, aided by the strong opening of multi-lingual Adipurush, and the 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 box office performance of Pathaan.

The cumulative box office for Jan-Jun releases stands at ₹4,868 Crore, which is 15% lower than the same period in 2022. At this rate, 2023 is expected to end at ₹9,736 Crore, which will be 8% lower than the annual 2022 box office of ₹10,637 Crore. However, the second half of 2023 has a strong lineup of films that are expected to perform well, especially Jawan, Salaar, and Tiger 3. This puts the year in good stead to surpass the 2022 gross box office, or at least get very close to it.

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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 the Indian box office is alive and kicking, even though the kind of films that are delivered may have changed since the pandemic. 

Top 10 Films (Jan-Jun 2023) 

January release Pathaan is the top film in the first half of 2023, with its box office being almost double 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 the Telugu and Hindi markets. Fast X is the only Hollywood film to feature in the top 10 films list at the end of June 2023.

Language Share 

For language share calculation, the language-wise box office of films released 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, the 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 the Kannada language's share,  from 8% (2022) to 2% (Jan-Jun 2023).