Worldwide Blockbuster Dhurandhar Suffers ₹90 Cr Loss There

India’s highest grossing film of 2025, Dhurandhar is marching ahead towards bigger milestones as New Year eve sets in. The Ranveer Singh starrer has earned around 1100 Crores gross worldwide and created history at the Bollywood box office. Even after 25 days, the spy thriller is clocking double digit revenues. 

Amid this glorifying box office run, one significant setback faced by this Aditya Dhar directional is that the ban in Gulf countries has resulted in a whopping loss of approximately 90 Crores.

While the film performed exceedingly well outside India, lack of release in Middle East countries with sizeable market for Bollywood films due to considerable population of Indian settlers impacted the revenues by a huge amount. 

It is a known fact that Dhurandhar has been blocked across six Gulf countries — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE after censor authorities reportedly objected to its anti-Pakistan messaging as the story was inspired by Operation Lyari in Pakistan involving Indian intelligence.

The film’s overseas distributor opined thar it was a missed opportunity for Dhurandhar in Gulf countries as it garnered impressive word of mouth after releasing on December 5th and could have amassed close to 100 Crores in Middle East in its full run. 

Indian action films traditionally perform well in Gulf countries. Dhurandhar falls into the same category and could have evoked a strong response from theatregoers there as well. In the past, films like Fighter, Sky Force, The Diplomat, Article 370, Tiger 3 and The Kashmir Files was also banned in Gulf countries.

Nevertheless, Dhurandhar stormed the box office and emerged as the highest grossing film from India this year. In overseas areas like North America, the film turned out to be the highest grossing Hindi film of all time by surpassing the previous blockbusters Jawan and Pathan. 

The patriotic elements and action sequences struck a chord with audience and set the tone for a record breaking run in all territories of its release.