When Classmates almost dethroned Mohanlal and Mammootty films, earning 7x its budget with no stars | Malayalam News
After a thunderous box-office run, director Savin SA’s Vaazha 2 has finally started streaming on JioHotstar. One of the biggest Malayalam blockbusters in recent times, the coming-of-age comedy-drama grossed a whopping Rs 234.87 crore worldwide, according to industry tracker Sacnilk, making it the fifth-highest-grossing Malayalam film of all time. In fact, it even smashed the records set by Mohanlal’s L2: Empuraan (Rs 106.77 crore) and Thudarum (Rs 122 crore) in India nett collections by minting Rs 129.09 crore domestically. Interestingly, a trend that has been prevalent in Malayalam cinema over the past few years is that some of its biggest hits aren’t headlined by A-listers. From the mid-1980s to 2023, the record for the highest-grossing Malayalam movie of all time was held by either Mohanlal or Mammootty. After Mohanlal officially inaugurated the Rs 100 crore club in 2016 with Pulimurugan (Rs 139.5 crore), the magical three-figure mark seemed something only he could achieve. Until 2023, only his Lucifer (2019), directed by Prithviraj Sukumaran, came close to Pulimurugan, but it ended its lifetime run at Rs …







