The third quarter of the ongoing year brought a lot of surprises in the form of successful films. Certain titles that hardly had any hype in the beginning went on to become hits at the box office, bringing collections of around Rs. 2,700 crore between July and September.
August was the best among the three months, followed by September, where Mirzapur The Movie pulled the crowds to the theatres for a long time. But the surprise package here was Hanuman Ansh, which started at only Rs. 10 lakhs in the beginning and went on to accumulate Rs. 400 crore.
Notably, Hanuman Ansh continued to get multiple shows despite some big releases in theatres, and all of them went housefull, even on the normal days of the week. It even created a record with sales of 8 million tickets on BookMyShow.
Nivin Pauly’s Bethlehem Kudumba Unit also had a slow start and recorded gross collections of Rs. 60 crores in the first week. The worldwide figures were Rs. 331 crores. Mirzapur The Movie also created a similar record, with numbers of Rs. 335 crores worldwide.
Apart from marking a big comeback of Ravi Teja, Irumudi left a positive impression with its heart-touching content for multiple weeks. The movie’s gross collections were Rs. 225 crores, followed by worldwide collections of Rs. 246 crores.
Toxic, which could have changed a lot for Q3, did not leave a big impact as expected. However, the film collected Rs. 342 crores worldwide after starting at Rs. 135 crores. The movie witnessed a big drop by the second week, collecting a very small figure compared to the numbers recorded on the first day.
Reacting to the records of the third quarter, trade experts and social media users reiterated that star power cannot save a film from now on. Most of them said that strong content is necessary, even with simple storylines. They have even asked certain filmmakers to focus less on grand visuals and more on engaging scripts.
The fourth quarter has started now, with many big films scheduled to release between October and December 2026. The success of every movie is not guaranteed. But it will be interesting to see if the predictions made at the time of announcements and other updates will turn out to be true.
