Mollywood Box Office 2022: Sees 180% growth from 2021 led by Mammotty's Bheeshma Parvam

With 186 plus releases, the total domestic box office for Mollywood amounted to Rs. 468 crores. This represents an improvement of 180 per cent from the previous year.

By Jatinder Singh

Updated on Jan 05, 2023 | 07:26 PM IST | 487.3K

Bheeshma Parvam still (image courtesy of Amal Neerad Productions)

The year 2022 has just ended and we are in a new year now. 2022 was a comeback year for the cinema business after the two years hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the next couple of days, there will be a series of yearly box office performance reports done, starting with Mollywood today.

With 186 plus releases, the total domestic box office for Mollywood amounted to Rs. 468 crores. This represents an improvement of 180 per cent from the previous year, however, it's worth noting that the box office was only open for six months last year due to the pandemic. Compared with the pre-pandemic times, the numbers are similar to the inflation unadjusted gross of 2019. There has been a considerable hike in ticket prices over the last two years, so in real terms, the business was down from 2019. The number of HITs was also down from 2019, with fourteen films emerging HIT or better in 2022 versus twenty-one in 2019. Three of those went on to become BLOCKBUSTER, while three others were SUPER HIT.

The biggest hit and grosser of the year was Mammotty starrer Bheeshma Parvam. On release, Bheeshma Parvam set the record for the biggest opening weekend at the Kerala box office and then went on to become the third highest-grossing film in the industry's history, both domestically and worldwide. It was a memorable year for the “megastar”, as his other two releases, Rorschach and CBI 5: The Brain were also successful.

It wasn’t a great year for the other big “M” of Mollywood i.e. Mohanlal, whose both releases, Neyyattinkara Gopante Aaraattu and Monster failed to deliver at the box office. Mohanlal Jr., however, had a big blockbuster with Hridayam at the beginning of the year, with strong business outside Kerala, both in India and Overseas, crossing Rs. 50 crores mark worldwide, entering the top ten grosser ever.

The other blockbuster of the year was Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey, which riding on excellent word of mouth delivered a final number nearly 35 times its opening day. The film went on to beat many big-budgeted releases with Rs. 29.25 crores in Kerala, becoming the second highest grosser of the year in the state behind Bheeshma Parvam.

Prithviraj also had two big hits this year, Jana Gana Mana and Kaduva, with the former going over Rs. 50 crores worldwide, while the latter was just a bit under. He had a miss in the form of Gold and his final release of the year, Kaapa, emerging an average affair. Tovino delivered a big hit with Thallumaala after a series of failures.

The final classifications of 2022 with India distributor share in brackets are as follows:

All Time Blockbuster

Blockbuster