Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar has stopped the ‘invasion’ of Bollywood by southern film industries, filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma said on Monday, lauding the box office success of the spy thriller that emerged as the highest-grossing Indian film of 2025.
Varma also anticipated that the second instalment of Dhurandhar will be an even bigger hit.
“The fire ball of the Southies invasion into Bollywood has been kicked back by @adityadharfilms left foot, named #Dhurandhar and now his right foot getting ready with #Dhurandhar 2 … From what I saw of the 2nd part, if the 1st scared them, the 2nd will terrify them,” the Satya director wrote on Monday.
Produced by Lokesh Dhar, Dhurandhar is a collaboration between Jio Studios and B62 Studios. The spy thriller has earned over Rs 690 crore nett in India since its 5 December release.
With this, Dhurandhar has crossed the lifetime domestic collection of blockbusters like Kantara: Chapter 1, Coolie, Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra, and L2: Empuraan.
Earlier this month, Varma praised Dhurandhar, saying films of such scale and impact are seen as a threat by industry insiders.
“Whenever a path breaking and monstrous hit like #dhurandhar comes, the industry people will wish to ignore it because they will feel threatened by it due to their inability to match its standards ..So they will think of it as a nightmare, which will vanish when they wake up in their own films,” Varma wrote on X.
Varma also criticised the ongoing trend of pan-Indian films, saying many of them are based on dated storytelling assumptions.
Directed by Aditya Dhar of Uri: The Surgical Strike fame, Dhurandhar is set in Karachi’s Lyari town in the early 2000s. Dhurandhar follows an Indian spy working to dismantle Karachi’s mafia network. The film stars Ranveer Singh as agent Hamza Ali Mazari.
Akshaye Khanna, Sanjay Dutt, Arjun Rampal, Sara Arjun, and R. Madhavan round off the cast of Dhurandhar.
The sequel to the Aditya Dhar-directed spy thriller will release in theatres on 19 March. Dhurandhar 2 is set to clash with K.G.F star Yash’s upcoming film Toxic: A Fairy Tale For Grown-Ups at the box office.