Fading stardom and empty halls: inside the steep box office slump upending South Indian cinema

“I write this with a heavy heart. He brought this wrath upon himself. How can one be so careless about his own stardom? It is baffling as hell,” a Reddit user wrote, calling out, in particular, “the lazy” screenplay and the obvious reliance on body doubles for the star actor.

Prabhas is not alone when it comes to the tide turning for the south movie industry. Tamil and Telugu cinema, particularly, have seen their fortunes falter over the past couple of years. As top names like Vijay and Pawan Kalyan move to politics, many other established faces—Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, Chiranjeevi, Ram Charan, Ajith, Suriya and others—are either failing to deliver returns as before, or are stuck at a certain box office ceiling. This is a defining moment because cinema watchers in the south have for long embraced a strong star worship culture.

Meanwhile, the pan-India wave, where their films are monetized even in the Hindi belt, has slowed down. Many industry experts believe that the Telugu industry, in particular, has alienated its own loyal home turf by focusing on films that travel to the Hindi belt. The Tamil industry, too, is struggling with a younger generation of filmmakers finding it hard to craft new narratives that can appeal to the fan bases of iconic stars while offering them fresh perspectives. And high ticket prices in states like Telangana are also deterring people from visiting theatres.

Numbers show

Data from media consulting firm Ormax reveals a steep drop in theatre attendance across South India in 2025. Telugu cinema saw footfalls fall to 181 million, down from 213 million in 2024 and 242 million in 2023. Tamil cinema suffered an even sharper decline of over 15%, dropping to 160 million admissions—its lowest non-pandemic figure since 2016.

Out of ₹13,395 crore made at the domestic Indian box office in 2025, Telugu cinema accounted for 18% (as compared to 20% in 2024) while Tamil films contributed 13% (versus 15% the previous year).

In 2025, performance remained stagnant: the Telugu box office grew by a marginal 1%, while Tamil cinema slipped 1%. However, early 2026 figures from Ormax show divergent paths. Between January and June 2026, Tamil cinema grossed ₹750 crore—a steep 21% drop from the same period in 2025. Conversely, Telugu cinema surged 22% to ₹1,344 crore. Trade experts attribute this Telugu recovery to small and mid-budget films, noting that few major star vehicles were released or succeeded during this window.

The future of the two big star-driven industries now hinges on three things, industry experts point out. One, whether fresh faces that are already showing promise—Pradeep Ranganathan, Dhruv Vikram and Manikandan, among others—can sustain momentum. Two, if the industries can negotiate longer OTT (Over-The-Top) windows so their films don’t start streaming early, cannibalising theatre revenue. Lastly, if producers can negotiate better revenue sharing terms with star actors. Thus far, big actors usually accept a fat fee up front.

‘Excursion’ over

Buoyed by the success of S.S. Rajamouli’s blockbuster, Baahubali, several Telugu film stars and makers tried to dub their projects in multiple languages to cultivate a wider audience. They boosted investments in visual effects and production value.

However, with the exception of Pushpa, KGF, and Kantara, bona fide pan-India successes remain rare. Too many filmmakers jumped on the pan-India bandwagon, dishing out films that don’t justify the marketing expense.

“The reliance on pan-India films has backfired. Makers and actors must realise that the Telugu market audience is a very different species and extremely unforgiving if the product is predictable or clinical. They are very clear on the combination of spectacle and emotion that they want in their movies,” writer and documentary filmmaker Uma Vangal said.

She noted that recent releases by RRR stars Ram Charan (Peddi) and Jr NTR (Devara) both fizzled out. This was the end of the pan-India “excursion” given how repetitive the movies were.

“They need to realise they cannot be dictated by needs of the Hindi market in storytelling and have to look for stories from the soil that must be rooted in the cultural context of their own region,” she added.

B.H. Tharun, a Telugu film buff, said a lot of recent Telugu films, with their violent, hyper-masculine vibe, simply seem to be a response to counter the growing wave of nationalist films popularised by Bollywood, including hits like Dhurandhar.

“It seems like the only way to rival these hugely popular films up north. But there is complete lack of regional connect and the stars have lost their charm,” Tharun added.

Nikita Sreedhar, a communications professional, agreed that top stars across Telugu and Tamil seem confused and are going through a period of transition. “It’s a difficult one because narratives that can hold macho, larger-than-life heroes no longer make sense. And nobody has been able to figure out what else will work,” she said adding that Malayalam cinema, on the other hand, has been able to strike the right balance between star power and story.

Meanwhile, Tamil cinema, experts like Vangal believe, is grappling with different challenges where a new breed of directors is far too influenced by world cinema and needs to work harder to come up with films that speaks about real issues.

Sanket Kulkarni, head, business development (theatrical), Ormax Media, further pointed out that Tamil cinema continues to benefit from the equity of actors such as Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, Vijay, Ajith Kumar, Dhanush and Suriya, with Pradeep Ranganathan emerging as a potential new-age star. However, compared to Telugu cinema, the depth of the star pipeline is relatively limited.

“A star opens a film, and after that, every film, whatever its size, earns its run on merit. Some of the most rewarding outcomes have come from films that were not the biggest on paper,” said Devang Sampat, managing director, Cinepolis India. “When a big film underperforms, the answer is almost always in the writing, not in the market. Audiences today are watching more content across languages than ever before, so familiarity is the real risk. Hindi cinema went through this same phase and came out of it with a braver slate. The South is moving through the same cycle, and given the depth of talent across these industries, I would expect the same outcome,” Sampat added.

According to Mukesh Mehta, founder of E4 Entertainment, a south Indian film production and distribution house, producers who are increasingly dependent on sale of ancillary rights like OTT, do not see recovery from box office as entirely crucial. Consequently, filmmakers are failing to craft narratives tailored for mass-market audiences or enrich them with commercial elements like strong music tracks.

“The films of big stars aren’t even liked by their own fans anymore. Also, there is nothing new about them given their presence on social media and ads,” Mehta said.

High ticket pricing

The success of some Telugu films across India has also pushed distributors to inflate ticket rates who often insist on higher prices for big-budget films, denting prospects in the price-sensitive south Indian market. This has already affected hits such as Pushpa 2: The Rule in their home territory. During the movie’s release, several fans expressed frustration over the prices, which ranged from ₹500 to ₹3,000, a decision taken by the producers and distributors.

According to Ormax, while ATP (average ticket price) increased across all languages in 2025, the surge was especially pronounced in South Indian languages, with ATP rising by over 20%.

Meanwhile, several southern language films are also available to stream at home on OTT within four weeks of its theatrical release—this makes the cinema proposition less valuable.

In fact, according to data from market research firm Chrome Data Analytics & Media, several Telugu films found real life on OTT. Peddi, which had mixed fortunes theatrically, pulled 12.54 million reach on Netflix. In Tamil, Kara was a clear theatrical failure yet gathered 9.07 million reach on Netflix. Love Insurance Kompany’s flop didn’t stop it from finding an audience once it was repriced for streaming. The clearest lesson from 2026 is that real demand exists but at the right price point, Chrome Data Analytics & Media noted in a response to Mint’s queries.

“We’re seeing a genuine shift in audience behaviour—star power alone is no longer enough to guarantee a film’s success,” said Pooja Shrivastava, group head, data science, at Chrome. “A strong storyline has become the real draw, because viewers today have the option to experience a film on OTT. Films that lean on scale and marquee names but lack a compelling script are increasingly finding that audiences simply wait and often reward the content, once it’s available to stream,” she added.

The way forward

Several experts believe that going forward, stars and content should stop being framed as opposites in southern cinema. The most durable stars of the next decade will be the ones who treat their stardom as a distribution advantage for good material rather than a substitute for it. For makers, the discipline is on budgets. When costs are rational, a film needs conviction to succeed, not a miracle. Big stars too have a role to play here—southern film industries, where marquee actors often command outsized fixed fees regardless of box-office performance, remain divided over shifting to backend participation.

The debate has gained urgency after the Tamil Film Producers Council staged a one-day token strike this May demanding that leading actors and technicians move away from hefty upfront remuneration toward revenue sharing.

For the industry’s biggest stars, fees per project can exceed ₹100 crore. Yet recent disappointments such as Prabhas’s The Raja Saab and Suriya’s Kanguva have renewed questions over whether producers should continue paying such hefty fees regardless of a film’s commercial outcome.

That said, the OTT window standoff remains. Exhibitors this year have pushed for stretching the window to eight weeks, and producers across the southern industries came together quite visibly to resist that.

“Both sides have a point, which is why I do not see this as a war. Theatres are right that a short window changes audience psychology for a certain kind of film. Producers are right that in a high interest cost business, delaying digital revenue by a month can decide whether a mid-budget film is even viable,” said Kaushik Das, founder and chief executive officer of OTT platform AAO NXT. A single rigid window for every film is the wrong instrument, he added. A theatrical event and a ₹2 crore indie (an independent film) do not need the same rules.

“I expect the industry to land on a tiered arrangement, where the window flexes with the scale and nature of the release. That would be a mature outcome, and the current conversations, however noisy, are moving in that direction,” Das said.