For much of this year, Hindi cinema has lived with a familiar anxiety: could Bollywood engineer consistent, content-led theatrical footfalls in a fragmented, post-pandemic entertainment economy — one where streaming, gaming, and regional cinema are threatening to rewrite audience loyalty? Four days into December, that question finally seems to have an answer. And right now, the answer is loud, visceral, and resonant across early-morning screenings and late-night houseful shows: Bollywood is back.

What makes this resurgence particularly interesting isn’t just the numbers. It’s the nature of the films at the forefront. On one side is Dhurandhar, starring Ranveer Singh alongside Sanjay Dutt, Akshaye Khanna, R. Madhavan, Arjun Rampal, and Sara Arjun—a blistering, unapologetically violent action film that wears its A-certificate rating like a badge of honour. On the other is Tere Ishq Mein, led by Dhanush and Kriti Sanon—a slow-burn romantic drama, now in its second week, performing with the kind of stability many Hindi films haven’t seen in months. Together, they are testing and redefining assumptions about what India wants to watch on the big screen—and when.

Film business expert and producer Girish Johar calls the moment “a healthy sign of confidence returning, both from audiences and the industry”. He notes that Tere Ishq Mein continues to play strongly across single screens and multiplexes, while Dhurandhar is scaling in ways reminiscent of pre-pandemic festive releases. “Despite being an adult-rated film, nothing is slowing it down,” Johar says. “December has always been a fertile month for theatrical success, but content is doing the heavy lifting. If the content doesn’t work, audiences walk away—we’ve seen enough examples. This time, they’re staying.”

They are staying in numbers large enough to shift theatre operations. PVR INOX reports weekend occupancy crossing 50% for Dhurandhar across its circuits, prompting expanded show timings, including 7 AM screenings and midnight runs across cities. “This was one of the best weekends for us,” says Gautam Dutta, CEO – Revenue and Operations, sounding visibly relieved at a trend exhibitors have been waiting months to witness. “Word-of-mouth is strong, and the response is nationwide—not pocketed. We expect the momentum to carry forward.”

To decode the excitement further, it’s useful to look at the numbers. In its first four days, Dhurandhar has earned an estimated ₹111.26 crore net domestically—buoyed by a strong Monday that stayed steady instead of crashing, according to early trade estimates from Sacnilk. With Day 4 collections still coming in, the film is expected to comfortably cross ₹120 crore net by the end of the day. The consistency mirrors early trade sentiment: the film’s IMDb rating stands at 8.0/10 from more than 21,000 reviews, pointing to clear audience acceptance. In a landscape where the Friday-to-Monday fall often determines whether a film survives or disappears, Dhurandhar has cleared what industry insiders refer to as the “Monday Test”—the first sign of genuine theatrical legs.

Meanwhile, Tere Ishq Mein is fetching an equally interesting data pattern. No longer in its honeymoon weekend, the film is registering sustained traction across markets where word-of-mouth rather than marketing drives footfalls. It’s the kind of performance Hindi cinema has struggled to produce in the last few years, where front-loading and paid previews dominated business models but rarely translated into ongoing footfall.

For analysts, the takeaway is clear: genre doesn’t matter—engagement does. And if December is any indication, Bollywood’s audiences are increasingly genre-agnostic, but expectation-sensitive.

Trade veteran Komal Nahta frames it simply: “Content is the catchword, has always been the catchword, and will invariably remain the catchword. Good content never goes wrong. The success of these two films proves that universal truth once again.”

This resurgence also arrives at a strategically crucial time for exhibitors. The next two weeks will see an uncharacteristically robust lineup of theatrical releases—romance, action, patriotism, and even a global heavyweight with Avatar: Fire and Ash, releasing 19 December 2025. Add to that Ikkis, starring Agastya Nanda and the late veteran actor Dharmendra, positioned as a patriotic drama and scheduled for 25 December 2025, and the final week of December begins to resemble the kind of Christmas corridor the industry once depended on for yearly recovery cycles.

Distribution strategy is shifting accordingly. Rather than backing one trend, theatres are programming screens dynamically — expanding where necessary, cutting where not, and treating content performance as a fluid rather than pre-assumed variable. “We aren’t betting on a single segment,” Dutta says. “We’re betting on demand.”

The optimism is cautious but real. After two years of inconsistent theatrical recoveries, December 2025 is beginning to feel like the first month where Bollywood isn’t simply reacting to audience behaviour—it is shaping it. The chatter has moved from “Will this work?” to “What’s working, and how do we scale it?”

It is still early in the month. Dhurandhar will need to demonstrate weekday stability, Tere Ishq Mein must continue to hold, and the pipeline will determine whether this is a spike or the beginning of a cycle.

But for the first time in a long time, the industry doesn’t sound nervous.

It sounds competitive.

It sounds hungry.

And, most importantly, it sounds like it believes audiences are coming back.

If the next few weeks hold, December 2025 may not just be a good month for Bollywood.

It may be the month the Hindi film business finally remembered what a hit feels like—not in numbers, but in energy.