There is an annual ritual in Indian entertainment where everyone declares the business is dying, and then the FICCI-EY report arrives and says the opposite.
This year’s edition was particularly unhelpful to the pessimists.
Variety reported that Dhurandhar headlined a record $2.18 billion year for Indian film, with the overall media and entertainment sector reaching $29.6 billion.
LocalSamosa reported the rupee figures from the same FICCI-EY report: India’s media and entertainment industry hitting ₹2.78 trillion, with digital leading growth.
FICCI’s own sector materials provide the institutional basis for the report, which is produced annually with EY and is the closest thing the Indian industry has to an authoritative data set.
The Hollywood Reporter India separately reported the Indian box office crossing ₹13,000 crore, with Bollywood at a record ₹5,504 crore, and examined how the other language industries performed against that.
The FICCI-EY report matters because Indian entertainment has a data problem. Box office figures are self-reported and frequently inflated, streaming platforms do not publish viewership, and there is no equivalent of a comprehensive third-party tracking service.
The annual report is therefore the number everyone quotes, including in investor decks, policy submissions and international co-production pitches.
It also has a consistent finding over the last five years: digital keeps growing, television keeps shrinking, and film revenue is more volatile than either but has trended upward.
That pattern contradicts the popular narrative that streaming has eaten the film business. What the data suggests is that streaming ate television.
Confirmed by the report and its coverage: Indian film revenue reached a record $2.18 billion; the overall media and entertainment sector reached $29.6 billion, equivalent to ₹2.78 trillion; digital led sector growth; Dhurandhar was the headline film performance of the period.
Separately reported: the Indian box office crossing ₹13,000 crore with Bollywood at a record ₹5,504 crore.
Not established: profitability, which the revenue figures do not address. A record revenue year with record production budgets can still be a loss-making year for a large number of individual films.
The gap between the sector data and the industry mood is the most interesting thing in this story. Producers report a difficult market. Exhibitors report soft footfalls outside tentpoles. And the aggregate numbers keep going up.
Both things are true, and the reconciliation is concentration. Revenue is increasingly captured by a small number of very large films, while the middle of the market has thinned dramatically.
That is a structural problem the headline number hides. An industry where ten films make most of the money is more fragile than one where a hundred films each make some, because a single weak quarter from the top ten becomes an industry-wide crisis.
It also squeezes exactly the mid-budget films that develop new directors, writers and stars.
A note on reading these figures. The dollar and rupee numbers in circulation cover slightly different scopes and periods depending on the report section, which is why coverage varies. Anyone quoting a single number should check which scope it refers to.
The more durable insight is directional: digital growth, television decline, film volatility with an upward trend, and increasing revenue concentration.
For anyone building a business around Indian entertainment, those four trends matter far more than any single headline figure.
BENGALURU BAATH TAKE
The number is real and the celebration should be limited, which is a boring position but an accurate one. A record revenue year that is increasingly generated by a handful of enormous films is not a healthy industry, it is a profitable casino. The thing that actually builds a film business is the middle: the ₹20 crore film that makes ₹60 crore and produces a director who makes a ₹200 crore film in five years. That layer has been thinning for a decade and no headline figure captures it. Read the growth number, then ask how many films made it, and then decide how you feel.
SOURCES & VERIFICATION
Verification status: CONFIRMED · Independent confirming sources: 4
- 1. Variety — https://variety.com/2026/film/news/dhurandhar-record-2-18-billion-2025-indian-film-ficci-ey-report-1236697510/
Confirms: Record $2.18 billion year for Indian film and $29.6 billion for the overall media and entertainment sector, per the FICCI-EY report. - 2. LocalSamosa — https://www.localsamosa.com/news/ficci-ey-report-2026-media-and-entertainment-industry-11258234
Confirms: India’s media and entertainment industry at ₹2.78 trillion with digital leading growth. - 3. FICCI — https://ficci.in/sector/media-entertainment
Confirms: Institutional source for the FICCI media and entertainment sector report. - 4. The Hollywood Reporter India — https://www.hollywoodreporterindia.com/features/insight/2025-india-box-office-crosses-historic-13000-crore-as-bollywood-hits-record-high-of-5504-crore-but-how-did-other-industries-fare
Confirms: Indian box office crossing ₹13,000 crore with Bollywood at a record ₹5,504 crore.
