The theory goes that there are only seven stories in the world, and every story ever told is their permutation. In the same vein, there are seven clichés in Bollywood—Akshay Kumar, the three Khans, Deepika Padukone, the Kapoors, and Karan Johar—who tell the same story over and over again.
This dictum was recently proved in a cavernous PVR auditorium that stood eerily silent during an opening-day show of Housefull 5, its plush seats untouched despite the top booking app flashing a deceptive 60 percent sold status. Akshay Kumar’s latest comedy caper, backed by a staggering ensemble of 19 stars including Abhishek Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt and Nana Patekar, limped to a Rs 24-crore opening on June 6—a pale shadow of the franchise’s earlier debuts—and failed to cross Rs 100 crore in its opening week.
Social media buzzed with disdain, branding it a “cringe disaster” and “waahiyat”, with its trailer scraping just 8 million YouTube views in 21 hours—one of Akshay’s lowest. This flop, coupled with whispers of producers inflating ticket sales to mask empty theatres, paints a grim picture for Bollywood’s biggest names. Their star power is dimming, which threatens India’s Rs 12,000-crore entertainment industry, its 9,500 screens, and the hundreds of millions of film watchers who fuel it. The ironic twist is that as Hindi cinema stumbles, South Indian films surge. It exposes Bollywood’s creative famine.
Akshay, the indefatigable ‘Khiladi’, once ruled B-town with hits like Hera Pheri and Welcome. But his recent offerings like Sky Force, Kesari 2, and now Housefull 5 have floundered, failing to cross Rs 100 crore. The Big B lent his gravitas to Housefull 5 via Instagram endorsements for son Abhishek, but couldn’t improve the film’s Rs 54 crore two-day haul. His recent roles, like in Kalki 2898 AD (Rs 550 crore in Hindi), leaned on South Indian production muscle, underscoring Bollywood’s reliance on external firepower.
Salman Khan’s Sikandar gathered a disappointing Rs 26 crore, despite its Rs 200-crore budget. Kangana Ranaut’s Emergency, where she played Indira Gandhi, crumbled at Rs 18.4 crore. Though Anupam Kher praised Kangana’s directorial vision, audiences shunned the film, echoing their rejection of his patriotic cameos in flops like The Vaccine War (2023).
SRK rode high with Pathaan’s Rs 1,055 crore in 2023, but his sparse 2024 releases and a paan masala ad controversy have dented his image, with X posts decrying Bollywood’s “corporate booking laundering” to fake success. Ranbir Kapoor’s Animal (2023) hit Rs 553 crore, but his 2024 ventures, including a Rs 400-crore film with Madhuri Dixit, struggled to match that scale with Shamshera (2022) still stinging as a high-profile flop. Deepika Padukone, once Bollywood’s box-office queen, leaned on Kalki 2898 AD’s South Indian success, but her solo projects like Chhapaak (2020) flopped. These icons now rely on southern directors; one X post said, “BW top heroes like SRK, SK, AK are begging films from South producers to get success.”
This star-studded slump is strangling India’s entertainment industry, which employs over 2 million people and relies on a shrinking number of big screens. In 2024, 1.2 billion tickets were sold, but the footfalls dropped 10 percent from 2023, with Hindi films capturing only Rs 4,679 crore of the Rs 11,833-crore total box office, a 13 percent decline. Only six original Hindi films crossed Rs 100 crore in 2024—Stree 2, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3, Singham Again among them—compared to 16 in 2023. At least 20-25 films starring Akshay, Amitabh, Salman, Kangana, Anupam, Shah Rukh, Ranbir and Deepika failed to hit this mark, a stark fall from 2018’s 13 films.
The sociological shift is brutal. OTT platforms, with 96 million subscriptions, offer diverse content at Rs 100-200 monthly, trumping theatre costs. In 2023, 400 films skipped theatres for streaming, up 30 percent from 2022. Southern cinema’s mass appeal, with stars like Prabhas and NTR Jr, filled the void, while Malayalam and Gujarati films grew 10 percent and 66 percent in market share.
South Indian cinema is thriving, with dubbed Hindi versions of Pushpa 2 (Rs 889 crore), Kalki 2898 AD (Rs 550 crore), and Devara (Rs 300 crore) outpacing Bollywood’s best. Telugu and Tamil films leverage spectacle and relatable narratives, resonating with rural Gen Z who drive 65 percent of video consumption, per an EY report.
Chhaava’s Rs 567 crore shows Bollywood can still deliver, but its Maratha pride narrative mirrors southern cinema’s cultural rootedness. Javed Akhtar noted, southern films’ “dusky” stars like Allu Arjun connect better with India’s heartland than Bollywood’s urban elite. As one social media user declared, “All 90s actors are done n dusted.” Bollywood’s focus on marketing fashion and glamour alienates rural viewers, who embrace South Indian films’ collectivist ethos amid rising Hindutva sentiments.
Political messaging is another albatross. Kangana’s Emergency and The Kashmir Files (2022) leaned into nationalist fervour, but alienated viewers with heavy-handed narratives, earning Rs 18.4 crore and polarising reviews. SRK and Aamir faced boycotts for perceived “anti-Hindu” stances, with Laal Singh Chaddha (2022) crashing amid X-fuelled outrage. Deepika’s endorsement of Operation Sindoor with Kangana and Akshay didn’t translate to box-office wins, as audiences reject ideology-driven films.
The claim of Karan Johar and SRK’s faction stifling others holds historical weight—production houses Dharma and Yash Raj’s 1990s’ dominance marginalised independents—but OTT and southern cinema have broken their stranglehold. Still, Johar’s “herd mentality” critique rings true, with Housefull 5’s recycled gags epitomising Bollywood’s creative rut.
Bollywood is a fading star, its light dimmed by tired tales, uninspired tunes and a growing chasm between its urban elite lens and the vibrant pulse of India’s heartland. The numbers don’t lie: theatre attendance has crashed from 1.6 billion in 2018 to a mere 0.8 billion in 2025, investments are drying up, and South Indian cinema—think Pushpa 2 raking in Rs 889 crore—has stormed the Hindi market with a vigour Bollywood can only envy.
The analysis lays bare these wounds, but it stops short of gazing into the crystal ball. In the long run, Bollywood could rise anew, a phoenix forged in the fires of reinvention. It can be a remote possibility if producers ditch sequel churns like, say, Dabangg 7 for bold, pan-Indian epics that marry South India’s mass appeal with Hindi cinema’s emotional depth. Collaborations with Tollywood and Kollywood directors may spark a creative renaissance, with OTT platforms, now boasting 150 million subscribers, becoming Bollywood’s laboratory for daring narratives and new faces. Music, the lost heartbeat of Hindi films, will have to return with soul-stirring anthems that echo from Mumbai to Madurai.
If Mumbai fails to smell its nemesis, it may find Bollywood a ghost town by 2035. Single screens will vanish entirely, multiplexes will screen dubbed South Indian blockbusters, and Hindi cinema’s once-mighty stars will fade into nostalgia reels on YouTube. The industry, too stubborn to shed its elitist skin and embrace India’s diversity, will become a footnote.
The Bollywood ecosystem’s choice is stark: adapt or dissolve. Its legacy teeters on the edge, but its future hinges on a single truth: only by rewriting its script to reflect all of India can it reclaim the spotlight. If the script isn’t redefined and the choreography redone, the Bollywood story would be a comic tragedy.
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