AI generated summary, newsroom reviewed
Marathi cinema might be at a precipice, the same precipice from which, during the pandemic, Malayalam cinema took flight. Deeply human stories, rooted in a specific social milieu, and effortlessly chatty, there is the sleeper hit Tighee, following two sisters and an ailing mother in Pune. There is also the direct-to-streaming, brutal, modernist puncture, Toh Ti Ani Fuji, about a crumpled couple crossing paths in Japan. These films might be a new face of, a new phase in Marathi cinema—might being the operative word, for such films can easily taper out as exceptions, instead of snowballing into something seismic.
“One film tends to change the landscape, and a slew of similar films follow. It happened with Shwaas (2004) after a long time, then, Sairat (2016), that changed everything. We are in another kind of flux now,” Irawati Karnik, the screenwriter of Anandi Gopal (2019), Jhimma (2021), and Toh Ti Ani Fuji tells THR India.
These films are what you might call “middle of the road”, a genre that looks at the mundane as a source and setting of the cinematic, uninterested in and unbothered by either the kitchen sink realism of independent cinema or the spectacle of mass cinema. “These kinds of movies are the way to go, because they are commercially safe. We can afford to make them without losing too much money,” Nikhil Mahajan, National Award-winning Marathi filmmaker and the producer of Tighee tells THR India.
Championing new voices who marshal new kinds of stories, these films exist alongside commercial Marathi cinema staples, which, too, have been gathering steam. Three of the highest grossing Marathi films of all time are post-pandemic releases—Baipan Bhari Deva (2023), a drama that follows seven sisters; Ved (2022), a romantic drama; Pawankhind (2023), a historical drama.
Though, it must be noted that none have breached the 100 crore mark, only Sairat (2016), the top-grossing Marathi film, having achieved that. Notably, these are films driven not by stars, but a certain intensity of storytelling and its capacity for resonance. Karnik notes, “We have never had films that have done well because of the stars in them. Casting the “right” star has never served Marathi films. The audience almost always goes for the experience of the film itself.”
Now, with the recently released Raja Shivaji creating a new record for the highest opening day collections, inching towards the 100-crore horizon, the spotlight on Marathi cinema’s commercial prospects is sharpening. This film is part of a recent genre that Karnik characterizes as “nostalgic, looking towards a glorified past, rather than present or a future”.
The commercial landscape of Marathi cinema, though, has often been dwarfed by Hindi cinema, which emerges from the same state of Maharashtra. Mahajan notes that Marathi films don’t have a digital pre-sale, “the comfort of knowing we can sell a film for a certain amount on OTT or satellite,” a privilege that Hindi films get. This cranks up the pressure on the theatrical outcome of a film, and is “a significant deterrent for Marathi cinema.”
Then, there is the hemmed-in audience for Marathi films. “We only manage to reach an audience in Maharashtra,” Karnik notes, “But even in Maharashtra, we are in competition with Hindi movies—the number of shows and the willingness of the Marathi audience to shell out for highly priced tickets.”
Raja Shivaji, then, is an example of utilizing the Hindi dub, lassoing Hindi cinema stars, to pad up its theatrical distribution—having 1,852 shows in Marathi and 3,919 shows in Hindi, though the Hindi shows are having a fraction of the Marathi shows’ occupancy, contributing lesser to the total box office collections. It is an attempt for the Marathi film to achieve that coveted and grossly worn out descriptor—pan-Indian.
Mohit Takalkar, the director of Toh Ti Ani Fuji, though, has a different vision. Given that the Marathi audience “has always had easy access to Hindi cinema, Marathi cinema has to offer something genuinely distinct, and not a smaller version of something else. With Malayalam, Tamil, and Bangla cinema the audience is loyal to that language, those actors, the stories, and filmmakers. That is not the case for Marathi cinema.” His film, Toh Ti Ani Fuji, then, is an offering to that vision—a spaciously conceived, confidently mounted, formally adventurous film.
The emergence of streaming as an alternative to theatrical release offers another pathway for this vision. Platforms like Zee5 are, in fact, hedging their bets on Marathi cinema. Hema V, the Chief Channel Officer ZEE Marathi & Business head Marathi ZEE5 tells THR India, “Marathi has been a priority market for ZEE5, with Marathi emerging as a high-engagement, high-retention market,” The platform saw an 81% growth in viewership for Marathi content between September 2024 to September 2025.
Zee5 currently hosts around 20 Marathi shows, alongside a growing library of Marathi films. Last year, they picked up films like Krantijyoti Vidyalay Marathi Madhyam, Jaaran, Ata Thambaycha Nahi, Dashavatar, and Sthal. While Dashavatar and Jaaran emerged as the most commercially successful Marathi films of 2025, earning 29 and 9 crore, respectively, Sthal came onto the platform after completing a successful film festival run.
Toh Ti Ani Fuji, too, charted that route, releasing directly on SonyLIV. Shiladitya Bora, the film’s producer, is no stranger to Marathi cinema. The distributor of Chaitanya Tamhane’s Court (2014), he also produced Picasso (2019)—Amazon Prime Video’s first direct to digital Marathi film—and Ghaath (2023), which had a limited commercial release.
These Marathi films don’t remotely have a commercial cache, but arrive at theaters or the small-screen having done a round at the film festival circuit, much like Sabar Bonda did last year, having won at Sundance.
Toh Ti Ani Fuji, though, as Takalkar notes, “wasn’t so lucky, didn’t get through anywhere, except the Pune International Film Festival where it was acknowledged by some awards.” As often happens with such films, where theatrical prospects are dim if not negligible, an uncertainty lingered until SonyLIV came on board, and “gave the film a second life. They responded to its restraint, its modernity, its refusal to simplify relationships or have a resolved ending,”—the very things that made it commercially unviable.
The streaming platform, then, took a slightly off-center strategy. Instead of emphasizing the Marathi language, as Bora notes, “SonyLIV sees Toh Ti Ani Fuji as an Indian film whose language happens to be in Marathi. That is why they are promoting Main Voh Aur Fuji, the Hindi-dubbed version more.” This might be because Marathi cinema often has the reputation of catering to family audiences, which Toh Ti Anu Fuji does not. A subtle distinction between Marathi movies and movies made in Marathi is being inscribed. Karnik, too, is unsure of “how much of the Marathi audience or industry has watched Fuji. It has managed to reach a non-Marathi audience through SonyLIV.”
While, on the one hand, as Karnik notes, films like Tighee are thriving in theaters with a good word of mouth, “releasing in the face of the monstrous hit Dhurandhar and still holding its own,” there is OTT that, Mahajan notes, “is increasingly receptive to picking up Marathi films. Fuji coming directly to OTT is a very good thing for us.”
Though, he is also cautiously optimistic, for while there is an increasing interest in Marathi cinema, “we don’t have a Marathi Kumbalangi Nights (2019) which introduced an entire new audience to the concept of Marathi cinema. We have not had that kind of film yet, though we are close to having a breakthrough success at a pan-Indian scale.”