2025 in Review: Highly Anticipated Films That Disappointed at the Box Office

Having a big star cast and a huge budget does not always guarantee a film's success at the box office. Every year, some of the most awaited movies fail to connect with the audience and end up being major disappointments. The year 2025 saw several such films that had immense pre-release hype but could not deliver the expected results. Let's take a look at the big-scale films that underperformed this year.

Bollywood saw some of its most dependable names and franchises falter this year. War 2, the sequel to a mammoth blockbuster, opened huge due to the hype. However, negative word-of-mouth spread quickly, and the film failed the crucial Monday test, with collections dropping over 70% from its opening day. It was unable to recover and ended its run as a theatrical flop. Salman Khan's Eid offering, Sikandar, also opened big but saw no growth over the weekend. The collections crashed on Monday, and the film barely managed to recover its budget, making it a major underperformer.

Franchise films also took a hit this year. Baaghi 4, starring Tiger Shroff, failed to make an impact and ended its run with collections below its budget. Sonu Sood's directorial, Fateh, had a very poor run in theaters. However, some reports suggest the film found its audience after its release on OTT platforms.

South Indian cinema also delivered some of the year's biggest shocks. Ram Charan and director Shankar's mega-budget film Game Changer was expected to be a pan-India blockbuster. However, the film was rejected by the audience from day one and struggled to even cross the ₹200 crore mark against its massive budget. Kamal Haasan's Thug Life, Ajith Kumar's Vidaamuyarchi , and Vikram's Veera Dheera Sooran also were the other highly anticipated Tamil films that failed to perform. The films received poor reviews, which resulted in a short and unprofitable theatrical run.

Pawan Kalyan's long-in-the-making period action film Hari Hara Veera Mallu also turned out to be a major disapointment. Made on a budget of over ₹250 crore, the film's collections did not even cross the halfway mark. The historical film 120 Bahadur, despite its interesting subject, has failed to attract audiences and its collections have remained very low in its run so far, while the film is still in theaters.