From the huge success of Saiyaara and big-budget movies like Vicky Kaushal’s Chhaava and Ranveer Singh and Akshaye Khanna’s Dhurandhar, 2025 was a hit for Bollywood. Every year, we get a new box-office monarch, the one who grosses the most money. Usually, it’s someone predictable — a superstar with mass appeal, endless fanfare and four films lined up. But 2025 has thrown a delicious curveball at Bollywood. The highest-grossing actor of 2025 isn’t a Khan. It’s not even Akshay Kumar or Vicky Kaushal, it’s someone you can’t even guess!

The comeback nobody saw coming

When we think of box office giants, names like Akshay Kumar, Ajay Devgn, and SRK pop up in our heads, and why not? Every year, one of these stars manages to be crowned as the box office monarch, but this year, it’s different. It’s time to move over, superstars, because there’s a new king of the box office and his name is Akshaye Khanna. If you’d told someone at the beginning of 2025 that Akshaye Khanna would defeat superstars like Rishab Shetty, Shah Rukh Khan, Vicky Kaushal and Akshay Kumar to claim the crown as the year’s box office champion, they’d have laughed you out of the room. Yet here we are, and the numbers don’t lie.

Khanna’s two major releases this year have collectively earned ₹993.41 crore in India, cementing his position as India’s most bankable star in 2025. His films Chhaava and Dhurandhar haven’t just performed well; they’ve dominated the box office.

The year of Akshaye Khanna

Akshaye Khanna’s Bollywood journey is quite fascinating. In the early 2000s, he was pushed aside by an industry obsessed with larger-than-life heroes. Bollywood wanted loud, flashy stars who danced and fought with maximum drama. Khanna’s style was subtle, internal, slow-burning, so he didn’t fit the mould.

A string of commercial failures followed. Films like Aakrosh, No Problem, and Gali Gali Chor Hai tanked. Then came a four-year hiatus that nearly erased him from public memory. But when Khanna returned, he chose powerful scripts and complex characters that demanded an actor, not just a star. His work in Drishyam 2 reminded audiences of his brilliance. In Section 375, he showcased his range as an actor, and then 2025 happened.

In Chhaava, Khanna portrayed the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb with such menacing precision that critics and audiences alike were spellbound. The film collected ₹808 crore at the worldwide box office, becoming the highest-grossing Hindi film of 2025. Akshaye Khanna’s performance in Dhurandhar, is being labelled as the performance of the year. Playing Rehman Dakait, a Pakistani gangster, everyone on the internet agrees that Akshaye Khanna outshone Ranveer Singh in the film. With these two blockbusters, he has proven talent matters the most. We’re happy that Akshaye Khanna is finally receiving the praise he deserves. And we can’t wait to see what he does next.

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