Why Tollywood Struggled This Year?

Tollywood is not in a good position this time.

For the first time since 2020, the Telugu is not in the top three of the highest grossing regions of Indian cinema. But why did this happen only a few months after one of the biggest successes in the form of Pushpa 2?

There are multiple reasons behind it, but two main reasons are : lack of big budget extravaganzas, and side effects of piracy! Unlike 2024, there were no big budget spectacles, and even if there were some, they fizzled out like Game Changer and Hari Hara Veera Mallu.

Even the likes of Pawan Kalyan Pawan needs no introduction to South Indian people >> Read More... and Nandamuri Balakrishna Nandamuri Balakrishna usually called as Nata Simha >> Read More... couldn’t save Tollywood with their batch of films. While Kalyan’s action drama They Call Him OG earned more than 300 crores, it wasn’t enough to make it a bonafide blockbuster.  

Nandamuri Balakrishna’s streak of successes came to a grinding halt when Akhanda 2 failed to resist the massive wave generated by Bollywood espionage drama Dhurandhar, which is now on the verge of becoming the highest grossing Indian film of this year, and possibly the first Indian film to earn more than 1000 crores this year.

Ironically, the films that were successful had budgets lower than 50 crores. Before OG, Sankranthiki Vasthunnam was the highest grossing Telugu movie of the year, with a worldwide collection of almost 300 crores on a budget of just 50 crores. Films like Little Hearts and Court turned out to be blockbusters on budgets lesser than 5 crores, something unimaginable in either Bollywood or Kollywood!