The Biggest Box Office Flops of 2026 So Far — and Where They Landed on OTT

The year's costliest miss by a wide margin. Maruthi's horror-comedy with Prabhas took a reported 208.6 crore worldwide against an estimated 350 crore budget — a 141 crore shortfall, more than double the next film on this list. The salient detail is that 208 crore would have been a strong result for almost any other Indian film in 2026; the problem was never the audience turnout, it was the number the film had to beat. It went on to become one of the most-watched non-Hindi titles of the half-year on streaming, drawing 17.5 million viewers by Ormax's count.

The Kannada period gangster film spent years in production and emerged to a reported 24.2 crore worldwide against an 80 crore estimate. Of the large-budget films on this list it has the weakest recovery rate, and unlike The Raja Saab it did not find a compensating streaming audience large enough to register on the half-year charts.

Harish Shankar's long-delayed Pawan Kalyan vehicle took a reported 96.2 crore against a 150 crore estimate. Both sources consulted flag the same pattern — a film whose production timeline stretched long enough that its budget grew while its release window kept moving, a recurring cause of loss on this list rather than an audience verdict.

A reported 80.2 crore worldwide against a 120 crore estimate. It is the highest-recovery film in this list's top five, which is the point: a 67% return still leaves a 40 crore hole when the budget is nine figures, and that is why this ranking uses deficit rather than percentage.

Sudha Kongara's Tamil period drama recovered the largest share of its budget of any film here — a reported 85.2 crore of 120 crore — and still finished 34.8 crore short. Films in this band are the ones most likely to be quietly made whole by their streaming and satellite deals, which is exactly the revenue these figures exclude.

A reported 6.6 crore worldwide against a 50 crore estimate — the worst recovery rate of any film on this list with a budget above 30 crore. This is the mid-budget Hindi failure mode of 2026 in one line: a film that opened without a star big enough to guarantee a first weekend and had nothing to fall back on when word of mouth did not arrive.

The lowest recovery rate on India Forums' entire tally — a reported 1.99 crore worldwide against 25 crore. A sequel to a film that was itself a streaming release, which is the irony worth noting: the original found its audience on OTT precisely because it never had to sell a ticket.