North America is a booming market for Telugu cinema. Venkatesh’s ‘Sankranthiki Vasthunam’ became the highest-grossing Telugu film of the year with USD 2.9 million, but Teja Sajja’s ‘Mirai’ is challenging that record. Pawan Kalyan’s ‘They Call Him OG’ is poised to break records with a massive premiere collection, potentially becoming the highest-grossing Telugu film of the year.
North America has become the most fertile ground for Telugu films outside of India with the language becoming the 11th most spoken language in the United States of America. Telugu films like Baahubali series, RRR, Pushpa franchise , Kalki 2898 AD, Devara: Part 1 have gone on to mint massive collections at the North American ticket window.But the year 2025 belongs to the unusual suspects who have been keeping the flag of Telugu cinema fly higher. It began with Venkatesh’s comedy action film Sankranthiki Vasthunam which ended it’s theatrical run in North America with a lifetime collection of USD 2.9 million.The film not only became the highest grossing Telugu film of the year but also the highest grossing film in the circuit for Venkatesh who has been part of movie for more than 4 decades now. Venkatesh’s throne was challenged by a younger actor Teja Sajja with his latest film Mirai, the film had minted USD 2.5 million mark few days ago. With that he became only the third actor to cross USD 2.5 million mark after Prabhas and Jr NTR. Mirai is still going strong at the box office where it’s Tuesday collection is expected to cross USD 100k, thereby nearing USD 3 million collection. Even if Mirai crosses the USD 3 million mark, it won’t be able to hold on to no.1 spot for long as Telugu superstar Pawan Kalyan is back on the big screen with his latest film They Call Him OG, directed by Sujeeth and also starring Emraan Hashmi. The film over the past few days has had content delivery issues but the North American distributors with the help of Pawan Kalyan fans and official channels are disturbing the hard drives across the country. As per final advance collection for its premiere shows the film has already collected USD 2.57 million and more shows are being added to the mix as more and more hard drives are getting delivered with each passing hour. With the current trend of ticket sales, the USD 3 million mark for the premiere show is a given and it will surely cross Coolie’s premiere day collection of USD 3.04 million becoming the biggest Indian opening of the year and also the highest grossing Telugu film of the year.
