Mumbai: For decades, the Diwali festival meant guaranteed fireworks at the box office, with superstars like Shah Rukh Khan in the North and Rajinikanth or Vijay in the South battling for festive supremacy. However, this year marks a significant, and possibly irreversible, shift: for the first time in recent memory, no tier-1 star across any Indian language has a theatrical release scheduled for the festival of lights.
At a time when OTT wasn’t a thing, big screen releases and Friday to Friday entertainment were all people looked forward to! I remember the Diwali of 2007, when Sanjay Leela Bhansali introduced two newcomers, Ranbir Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor with Sawariyaa. On the same day, Farah Khan introduced Deepika Padukone with Om Shanti Om alongside Shah Rukh Khan and the film went on to become a cult classic!
This year’s Diwali slate, therefore, is a battleground for younger talent and mid-sized films. Ayushmann Khurrana’s horror-comedy Thamma leads Bollywood’s offerings. The Maddock horror is the second horror comedy to get a Diwali release after last year’s Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3. But that film shared the weekend with the superstar-laden Singham Returns (Ajay Devgn, Akshay Kumar, Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone et al). Thamma flies solo in 2025.
Down South, the Tamil industry, traditionally the biggest Diwali market, is relying on films starring emerging actors like Pradeep Ranganathan (Dude), Dhruv Vikram (Bison), and Harish Kalyan (Diesel).
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