Mar 03, 2026 4:00pm IST
Why Theaters in Tamil Nadu Witnessed Lowest Footfalls in February
The first two months of 2026 have not been great for Kollywood, aka the Tamil Film Industry. While the delay of Thalapathy Vijay’s “Jana Nayagan” has disappointed the exhibitors and distributors in the state, the last month witnessed the lowest footfall from cingoers in Tamil Nadu.
In February, only two films, “With Love” and “Thaai Kizhavi,” managed to perform decently, while the rest of the releases failed right on their opening day.
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“February was supposed to be a good month, and there was also the fact that no big films were released. Especially, ‘Jana Nayagan’ was supposed to come out on January 9. The next date was on February 20, which was a cutoff before the Tamil Nadu elections and all that. There was no official thing from the producers. But once it was settled, they said that they would go to the Censor Board and get the certificate and come, but nothing happened. So they missed a big film, and everybody was scared of ‘Jana Nayagan,’ so smaller films didn't release, and those released could not match up. Even on day one, it could not do anything. The content was pretty weak. The footfalls dropped badly because the content was not attractive enough to come to the theatre. Only one film did reasonable business, which was ‘With Love.’ Other than that, there's a film called ‘Thaai Kezhavi,’ which is a sentimental family film on women empowerment that has done very well,” explains veteran industry tracker Sreedhar Pillai to Variety India, about how February witnessed a drastic dip in footfalls.
Ramesh Bala, another industry tracker, echoes the sentiments of Pillai as he shares, “Usually in January, around Pongal and Republic Day holiday, all the biggies release and February and March tend to be quiet months. Because after January, they aim for April, the Tamil New Year holiday, followed by April-May, traditionally summer holidays for school and college. So they aim for it. So, traditionally, February and March are low footfall months only. In February, we had ‘With Love,’ which attracted some footfall and ‘Thaai Kezhavi,’ towards the end, attracted some footfall. But apart from that, there weren't any notable releases. You need some big movies to fire up the box office.”
With Ranveer Singh’s “Dhurandhar 2” and Yash’s “Toxic,” March is expected to be dominated by these two pan-India biggies as both films will release in multiple dubbed languages, including Tamil.
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