All Eyes on Border 2: Bollywood pins January hope on Sunny Deol’s next

January is usually not the month Bollywood dreams of. It’s rarely positioned as a high-stakes release corridor, and for years the industry has quietly treated the first four weeks of the year as a commercial dead zone , a trend that many half-jokingly call the “January jinx.

” The logic is simple and somewhat historical: audiences spend heavily in November and December, during Diwali and Christmas, leaving the new year fatigued, cautious, and less willing to take cinematic risks. As a result, major banners traditionally reserve their bigger tentpole films for the more buoyant summer or festive quarters.A Slow January, So FarThe month hasn’t been barren in terms of releases. There has been a steady weekly supply of films across genres from drama to comedy but none have managed to ignite the box office in any meaningful way. Sriram Raghavan’s Ikkis headlined Dharmendra, Agastya Nanda and Jaideep Ahlawat- the film got a lot of praise and even earned Rs 30 crore at the box office but couldn’t recover its cost. Then came two different comedies one was Pulkit Samrat, Varun Sharma and Shalini Pandey’s Rahu Ketu and the other being Vir Das acted and directed Happy Patel Khatarnak Jaoss. But neither demonstrated the kind of mass-market draw required to shift the month’s mood from cautious to bullish.The January performance at best can be called as ‘lukewarm at best’ and in such a scenario all eyes are now on Border 2 which is releasing on Republic Day weekend on 23rd January.Sunny Deol returns to the battlefieldFor Sunny Deol, the film marks a significant chapter. After the phenomenon of Gadar 2, which stunned the industry with its ferocity at the box office, speculation has swirled around what his next large-format project would look like. While the actor has been involved in smaller and mid-budget productions, Border 2 is his first major theatrical event following that extraordinary comeback.

There’s also a legacy angle to consider. The original Border (1997) is a cult title within Hindi cinema’s war genre , a film that combined patriotism, sacrifice, emotion and lived memory in a way that left a generational imprint. Far from attempting a direct sequel in tone or narrative, Border 2 positions itself as a spiritual successor rather than a continuation, pulling its cast from a younger cohort and its director from a more contemporary filmmaking sensibility.Sunny Deol is not shouldering this alone. He is joined by

Varun Dhawan

,

Diljit Dosanjh

and

Ahan Shetty

, forming a multi-hero ensemble that broadens the film’s demographic reach.Behind the camera, the film is helmed by

Anurag Singh

, a director best known for Kesari, the

Akshay

Kumar-led war drama that won both box office and critical favor. Singh’s involvement suggests a blend of muscular storytelling with emotional grounding, a template that has proven effective in patriotic narratives before.Telugu Cinema Sets the PaceWhile Bollywood is waiting for its first major breakout of January, Telugu cinema has already produced two hundred-crore theatrical performers in a matter of days. Prabhas’ horror comedy action spectacle The Raja Saab sailed past the Rs 100 crore mark in its opening frame, leveraging the actor’s oversized pan-Indian aura. But the bigger talking point is Mana Shakara Varu Prasad Garu, starring

Chiranjeevi

and Venkatesh, which not only crossed the Rs 100 crore benchmark but also emerged as a legitimate hit, earning around Rs 165 crore in just eight days and displaying the kind of momentum that exhibitors love to track.The contrast between the two industries is stark. Telugu cinema’s January slate is muscular, ambitious, and unapologetically mainstream, the type of outing that assures theatres of high volume. Hindi cinema, on the other hand, has approached the month with hesitation and fragmentation, sticking to mid-scale releases and niche experiments.This divergence isn’t merely box office trivia; it speaks to a larger shift in release calendar confidence.

South Indian industries have normalized January as a competitive month thanks to Pongal and Makar Sankranthi festival, while Bollywood still treats it as an optional battleground. The south industry as a whole would have benefitted if Thalapathy Vijay’s Jana Nayagan would have not got stuck with the censor board which pushed it from its original release date of January 9th.For Border 2, then, the stakes are bigger than usual ,the film isn’t just expected to perform; it’s expected to prove that Hindi cinema can reclaim the month.January Jinx: Myth or Market Logic?Every industry folklore contains kernels of truth. The so-called “January jinx” in Hindi film trade is less superstition and more economics: the post-festival dip is real, purchasing power contracts, and audience behavior temporarily shifts to necessity instead of leisure. But there are always exceptions. Films like Pathaan, Uri- The Surgical Strike, Padmaavat, and last decade’s smaller wonder Airlift proved that the right film, with the right pitch, can absolutely dominate January.Talking about the January jinx, trade expert Taran Adarsh says, "I pointed this out in the 1990s where it used to happen. And this year also, of course, we had a case like 'Ikkis' released on January 1, it didn't work. But, I think there have been instances where the films have worked also in the past. This January jinx is there. But you know, more than that, the content has to be good. If the content is good, then no matter what date you release the film in, it can face any storm or any period and emerge victorious.Exhibitor Akkshay Rathie very much concurs with Taran Adarsh and added,"There have been enough and more exceptions to this January jinx rule. I remember Hrithik Roshan's 'Agneepath' had come on the 26th January weekend. There have been a bunch of Akshay Kumar films that have come on the 26th January weekend as well and all of them have done incredibly well.by Having said that, it's been a few years since all of this happened, and it's purely a coincidence that in January we've not been able to dish out the best of our films in recent times.Having said that, it's purely a question of one movie coming along in breaking, shattering that jinx.

I'm hoping, this year that film is 'Border 2'. It has all the elements - the cast, the scale, the genre, the franchise value, the mass outreach of Sunny Deol as a megastar, all of that at play and plus Anurag Singh, who's a phenomenal director and storyteller when it comes to especially films like these.So pretty hopeful that this year is the last year that we'll be able to talk about January jinx.”Whether Border 2 fulfills that hope is yet to be seen. But for now, it is the only film standing at the center of January and all eyes are on it.