After an impressive opening to 2024, February saw the box office collection take a nosedive with only Rs 625 crore coming in during the second month of the year. Malayalam survival thriller Manjummel Boys proved to be the surprise hit of the month, one of two films to have crossed the Rs 100 crore mark, as per the India Box Office Report by Ormax Media.
While different language industries use different parameters for assessing box office numbers (Gross, Nett or Share), Ormax’s report adopts Gross Box Office as the unified measurement. Under this, a film’s collection is always attributed to the month of its release, even if the film goes on to produce more or better numbers in the subsequent months. For films released in multiple languages, box office numbers reflect the contribution of such films to all the corresponding languages.
Malayalam cinema had its best-ever month at the box office, thanks largely to Manjummel Boys, an ode to friendship directed by Chidambaram S. Poduval. The film ended February with Rs 117 crore, placing it well ahead of the Rs 100 crore roped in by Hindi cinema’s first AI love story, Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya, starring Shahid Kapoor and Kriti Sanon. Yami Gautam-starrer Article 370 closed out February in third place, bringing in Rs 79 crore. Rounding off the top five were Premalu (Rs 65 crore), a Malayalam romantic comedy; and Bramayugam (Rs 25 crore), the Mammootty-led folk horror film, also in Malayalam.
Manjummel Boys’ resounding success took it to fourth position on the list of 2024’s highest-grossing films so far, behind Guntur Kaaram (Rs 142 crore), Hanuman (241 crore) and Fighter (Rs 242 crore).
At its current rate, 2024 is going to gross Rs 9,342 crore, which will be no match for the record-breaking tally of Rs 12, 226 crore set by 2023. However, we are just two months into the new year in terms of box office numbers, and a lot of twists and turns are sure to play out in the time ahead.
As for February’s language share, Malayalam displaced Tamil in the top three with a share of 17 per cent (three percentage points more than Tamil), behind Telugu’s 28 per cent and Hindi’s 34 per cent.
