Our monthly feature The India Box Office Report tracks the performance of the various films released every month at the Indian (domestic) box office. Monthly reports are published on this website in the third week of the following month. If the numbers for your film do not match those in our report, we will be happy to get information from you on the same, and update the report. Our email ID is mentioned at the end of this report below.

This is the May 2023 edition of the report. You can access the previous reports in the Insights section of this website.

Cumulative Box Office: May 2023

Films released in May 2023 grossed ₹763 Cr, making it the second-best month at the Indian box office this year, after January.

The cumulative box office for Jan-May releases stands at ₹3,838 Cr, which is 22% lower than the same period in 2022.  Since January 2023 (Pathaan's release month), no month has managed to surpass the ₹1,000 Cr threshold. On pro rata basis, 2023 can be estimated to gross ₹9,211 Cr, which is 13% less than 2022, which closed at ₹10,637 Cr (see our 2022 box office report).

Top 10 Films

The chart below lists the top 10 films released in May 2023, based on their box office performance in India.

The Kerala Story, a film that has been in the midst of various controversies, emerged as the top film of the month by a wide margin. It has also managed to feature at no. 2 in the list of top grossers of the year so far. The Tovino Thomas starrer Malayalam film 2018, a surival thriller based on the 2018 Kerala floods, also managed to surpass the ₹100 Cr mark (cumulative across languages). Two Hollywood films, Fast X and Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3, feature in the top five grossers of the month, with Fast X also featuring at no. 7 on the list of top grossers of the year so far.


Language Share

For language share calculation, language-wise box office of films releasing in multiple languages is assigned to the corresponding language. However, for Hollywood, the data for all languages is reported under the language head ‘Hollywood’.

As a result of Fast X and Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3's box office performance, the share of Hollywood language has increased from 7% (Jan-Apr) to 11% this month. The share of Malayalam language stands at 6%, up from 4% till last month, primarily due to 2018’s success.

How to read the numbers in this report?

Different language industries follow different reporting conventions (Gross, Nett or Share). We have used Gross Box Office as the unified measure for this report. For films releasing in multiple languages, collections are added up across languages to arrive at the film’s Gross Box Office at an all-India level.

Some films may be running in theatres at the time of publishing this report every month. For these films, Gross Box Office is estimated based on the latest trends available. Hence, it is normal that some numbers may be updated in the following month’s report, once actual collections have been estimated.

Numbers for a film are assigned to the month of its release, even if the business is spread over two or more months. For example, Pathaan released on January 25, 2023, and a sizeable component of the film’s business was registered in February 2023. However, in the analysis, Pathaan's entire box office has been credited to the month of January.

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