Salman Khan’s ‘Sikandar’, Aamir Khan’s ‘Sitaare Zameen Par’, ‘War 2’, ‘Raid 2’ top picks of 2025

Mumbai, Dec 31 (PTI) As the curtain closes on a relatively underwhelming 2024, trade experts and film exhibitors are pinning hopes on Salman Khan’s highly anticipated film “Sikandar,” and a plethora of franchise offerings like “War 2”, “Raid 2”, and “Housefull 5”, which they believe will reignite audience interest at the box office.

The film landscape for 2025 is loaded with diverse content but expectations are high from Salman’s “Sikandar”, which is set to release on the occasion of Eid in March.

Among the films heading into theatres are Kangana Ranaut’s political drama “Emergency”, Akshay Kumar’s war film “Sky Force”, Shahid Kapoor’s action-packed thriller “Deva” and Vicky Kaushal-starrer historical drama “Chhaava,” which chronicles the life of Maratha king Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj.

The second half of 2025 has a remarkable lineup of films like the sequel to popular titles such as “Jolly LLB 3”, “Raid 2”, “Housefull 5”, “War 2”, “Baaghi 4”, “De De Pyaar De”, and “Son of Sardaar 2”.

In addition to this, there are other releases such as Varun Dhawan’s romantic-comedy movie with father David Dhawan, Shahid Kapoor’s actioner which is helmed by Vishal Bhardwaj, a horror-thriller featuring Kajol, “Dil Ka Darwaaza Khol Na Darling!” starring Jaya Bachchan, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Wamiqa Gabbi and Swanand Kirkire, “Alpha”, Yash Raj Films’ next Spy Universe movie starring Alia Bhatt and Sharvari, and Aamir’s “Sitaare Zameen Par”.

Distributor-exhibitor Akshay Rathi, who owns theatres in Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh, said movies such as “Sikandar”, “Sky Force”, “Chhaava”, “Raid 2”, “De De Pyaar De 2”, “Housefull 5”, and “Alpha” have the potential to break box office records.

“If you compare the releases with 2024, which has been held together by two films – ‘Pushpa 2’ and ‘Stree 2’, there were other movies like ‘Singham Again’, and ‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3’ that did well.

“We need one blockbuster a month to sustain the exhibition infrastructure. We cannot rely on three to four blockbusters. We need that to happen with a lot more consistency. A higher number of films have the potential to become mega-blockbusters in 2025,” Rathi told PTI.

In 2024 “Stree 2” was the biggest and only hit of the year earning over Rs 500 crores, besides a handful of other releases such as “Shaitaan”, “Article 370”, “Laapataa Ladies”, “Munjya”, “Singham Again”, and “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3” did decent business.

According to Nitin Datar, President of the Cinema Owners and Exhibitors Association of India, and Amit Sharma, MD of Miraj Entertainment Limited, the 2025 lineup looks promising.

“It’s tough to guess now which film will do well because publicity has not started. However, 2025 looks good and I’m looking forward to the release of ‘Sikandar’, ‘Housefull 5’, ‘Jolly LLB 3’, ‘Emergency’, and ‘Chhaava’. The rest of the films will be slow starters but may pick up,” Datar told PTI.

“In terms of box office collection 2024 was the worst year, things look brighter compared to last year as there are films like ‘War 2’, ‘Jolly LLB 3’, ‘Housefull 5’, ‘Son of Sardaar 2’, ‘Raid 2’, ‘Jaat’, ‘Sky Force’, ‘Sikandar’. Overall Hindi films in 2025 should do a 15 to 20 percent better collection than in 2024,” Sharma told PTI.

Taran Adarsh said there’s an “overdose” of franchise films. He acknowledged the risk of audience fatigue but is hopeful that each film will attain commercial success.

“It’s going to be a strong 2025, there’s a good line-up of movies. There’s going to be an overdose of franchises and sequels. Let’s place our bets on every film that comes in,” Adarsh told PTI.

Trade expert Girish Wankhede said Salman Khan’s “Sikandar” might set the tone for an eventful year, which will also see Aamir Khan’s “Sitaare Zameen Par” arriving in theatres by mid-2025.

“In addition to these star-studded releases, the upcoming year will witness a plethora of sequels and prequels, both from the South Indian film industry and Bollywood. Each film is expected to feature stellar casts and possess immense potential to captivate audiences,” Wankhede told PTI.

Adarsh underscored the importance of quality content and urged the Hindi film industry to move away from remakes of South Indian films.

“In the coming days, we will see more quality projects and that’s because we’ve learnt an important lesson that we need to concentrate on content, and need to stop making remakes because they are not working.

“With everything being available on digital medium, people have seen it and people are not interested in seeing the new version, we’ve seen this in the case of ‘Baby John’ or ‘Sarfira’. We need to implement the lessons learnt.”