Mohanlal vs Nivin Pauly: BO Clash That Shocked All

On Christmas, Mohanlal’s high budget fantasy action film Vrusshabha directed by Nanda Kishore and Nivin Pauly’s Sarvam Maya directed by Akhil Sathyan, clashed in theaters.

While 2025 was a solid year for Mohanlal with the industry hit L2 Empuraan and Kerala’s first 100-crore grosser Thudarum, many anticipated that Vrusshabha would also emerge as a huge blockbuster success, and Mohanlal might end the year with another massive hit.

On the other hand, since Nivin Pauly was in a very tragic phase of his career with continuous failures over the last few years, there weren’t many expectations for Sarvam Maya.

However, the results were completely surprising. Vrusshabha was a washout in theaters and has collected only 2 crores worldwide so far, whereas Sarvam Maya hit 100 crores at the box office and emerged as the first 100 crore grosser for Nivin Pauly.

Following these contrasting box office results many trackers are suggesting that this is a solid example of how dramatically fortunes can change in cinema, as a single day brought a total shift for both Nivin Pauly and Mohanlal.

At the same time, many Malayalam audiences are now requesting Nivin Pauly to carefully choose his upcoming projects, suggesting that if he carries this momentum forward, he could easily reclaim his lost market.

Meanwhile, many people are worried about the results of Vrusshabha for Mohanlal and are asking him to focus more on solid content oriented films rather than fantasy action dramas. This is because not only was Vrusshabha a failure, but his directorial fantasy film Barroz released in 2024, was also a terrible disaster.

Nevertheless, it remains to be seen how Nivin Pauly will carry his career forward with the momentum gained from the success of Sarvam Maya and how Mohanlal will make a comeback after the disaster of Vrusshabha in the future.