As Dhurandhar approaches its 5 December 2025 release, it is rapidly turning into one of the most baffling marketing collapses in recent Bollywood history. With a cast boasting Ranveer Singh, Sanjay Dutt, Akshaye Khanna, R. Madhavan, Arjun Rampal, Sara Arjun, and Rakesh Bedi, the film should have been a headline-dominating juggernaut. Instead, it has become a real-time demonstration of how to sink a 300-crore production through indecision, silence, and misplaced confidence.
The non-promotion strategy adopted by Jio Studios, Aditya Dhar, and the makers is nothing short of negligence. The teasers gained good traction, but after the teaser release in July, the next asset didn’t arrive until late October, followed by the trailer in November—and both failed to propel it into the league it deserves. The city tours, negligible promotional activities, a paid event without traction, and a visibility level so low it borders on self-sabotage all make Dhurandhar seem like it is deliberately walking into a competitive box-office landscape with its eyes shut. For a film riding on such a massive ensemble, the lack of marketing boost looks less like strategy and more like a shocking misunderstanding of the industry’s realities.
To make matters worse, the makers have escalated ticket prices, seemingly assuming audiences would rush in purely because of the names attached. But high prices without hype is a dangerous combination and it is evident in the advances. This decision sends a clear message: the team is betting on star power instead of audience connection. And if the tickets weren’t hiked, the opening would still have been shaky—because zero promotion and awareness leads to zero urgency.
This entire approach is now pushing a 300-crore film toward a box office fate it does not deserve. Dhurandhar was built for impact, scale, and buzz. Instead, it is gasping for visibility days before release, stuck in a marketing vacuum created by its own creators.
No matter the final outcome, one thing is clear: The failure or fate of Dhurandhar will become a case study—an example future filmmakers will examine to understand how NOT to market a big-ticket star-studded film. Especially those who assume that a massive cast alone can substitute for publicity, audience engagement, and strong PR groundwork.
If Dhurandhar falls, it will not fall because of its cast or its potential. It will fall because the people responsible for bringing it to the audience simply didn’t bother to tell the audience it was coming.
