Mid-year stocktaking: 2025’s most expensive films fail to deliver, audience stays away

The most expensive projects of the year are sinking because all they do is content rotation, writes Amogh Ravindra

At the start of 2025, the film calendar looked like a game of blockbuster bingo. Pan-India spectacle? Check. Star-studded comeback? Check. Political thriller, legacy sequel? All checked. It was as if the industry had dusted off the mistakes of the last few years, looked around solemnly, and said, ‘This time, we’ve got it’. Budgets ballooned, promotions went into overdrive, teasers were treated like events. It all pointed to a comeback season. But eight months in, the victory lap feels premature. Most of the big guns have already been fired, and instead of a box office roar, there’s the awkward sound of a slow clap. The build-up was massive. The follow-through, not so much.

The recent big release ‘Coolie’ was meant to topple the box office. Rajinikanth teamed up with Lokesh Kanagaraj, Anirudh turned up the volume, and the trailer looked like it had already declared victory. The hype was deafening. Theatres were packed. Records tumbled. But once the noise settled, something didn’t quite land. The emotion felt patchy. The story lacked grip. ‘Jailer’, which was released less than two years ago, had a similar scale but somehow felt warmer. ‘Coolie’ was loud. ‘Jailer’ lingered.

The trend didn’t stop there. ‘War 2’ brought Hrithik Roshan and
Jr NTR together under the banner of a franchise with sky-high expectations and a mountain of budget. It opened modestly, but the buzz faded fast. The emotional core barely registered, and by week two, even loyal fans had moved on. ‘Game Changer’, directed by Shankar and headlined by Ram Charan, promised a sweeping political epic. What arrived was a sermon in IMAX. ‘Thug Life’, meant to be a landmark reunion between Kamal Haasan and Mani Ratnam, got tangled in controversy before it could even settle. A few remarks sparked a backlash in Karnataka. Whether it was a misstep or a marketing move remains unclear. Either way, the headlines didn’t help. And then there was the Surya-starrer ‘Retro’ (directed by Karthik Subbaraj). It came in with genre swagger and neon confidence, but once the lights dimmed, the plot lost its way. Audiences walked in intrigued and walked out unsure of what they had just watched. ‘Ekka;, the much-hyped Kannada film backed by not one, not two, but three major production houses, also missed the mark. Big names, big push, but the magic never showed up.

Hollywood has not been spared either. Once-guaranteed blockbusters like ‘Fantastic Four’, ‘Superman: Legacy’, and ‘Thunderbolts’ are wobbling under the weight of delays, constant rewrites, and growing audience indifference. The superhero fatigue conversation is no longer a whisper. It is turning up in empty theatres, muted fanfare, and teaser trailers that barely trend beyond day one. What used to be bulletproof formulas are now showing cracks, and the sheen of interconnected universes is wearing thin. Even nostalgia seems to be running out of things to recycle.

This shift is not surprising. The audience has moved on, and the industry is still trying to catch up. Years of streaming have reshaped how attention is earned and how quickly it is lost. Theatres are no longer the default choice. They are an effort. When a film competes with the comfort of a couch and a catalogue of global cinema just a click away, it needs more than just scale. It is not enough to flash a superstar or crank up the volume. Viewers have been watching Korean thrillers with airtight plots, Spanish dramas that cut deeper, and Malayalam indies that do more in silence than most blockbusters do in three hours. OTT has become a buffet. The audience is not starving. They are spoilt. They have tasted better, so they expect better. A soaring score cannot fake emotion. A plot twist cannot save a hollow script. And recycled stories, no matter how glossy, are being met with shorter conversations and quieter exits. What is quietly killing these films is not just failure. It is forgettability. The most expensive projects of the year are vanishing within days. They are discussed, dissected, and quickly replaced by the next trailer. Somewhere along the way, cinema slipped into content rotation. Just another scroll on a screen.

Not everything has drowned in noise though. ‘Su from So’, a small-budget film without the cushion of pre-release hype, broke through the clutter. Its writing was specific, its tone unforced, and it built its following the old way. Slowly, quietly, and honestly. It reminded everyone that sincerity, even in whispers, travels far.

There is still some time left. ‘Kantara Chapter 1’, ‘Madharaasi’, ‘Dhurandar’, and ‘Raja Saab’ are among the few major releases with a shot at shifting the narrative. Some arrive with goodwill, others with genre muscle. Whether they deliver impact or quietly join the year’s growing list of near-misses remains to be seen. And while 2025 might be limping toward the finish line, the industry already has its eyes on next year’s heavyweights. ‘Toxic’, with its stylised grit, and ‘Ramayana’, with its mythical ambition and sky-high budget, are both being lined up as redemption arcs. The kind of films meant to not just roar but echo. But for now, 2025 feels like a year that came in shouting and may quietly bow out. And as the dust settles, one question lingers. Not how big a film looked. But how deeply it stayed.