On Wednesday, IMDb (Internet Movie Database) announced its list of most popular Indian movies of 2025 so far as the first half of the year came to a close. The list featured films releasing between January and June 2025, which saw the most visitors on the IMDb site. While several big films from across several languages featured in the top 10, a small Tamil film with no stars and a budget of just ₹35 crore managed to beat them.
The David that beat several Goliaths
According to IMDb, the list tabulated all the movies released in India between January 1, 2025, and July 1, 2025, that have an average IMDb user rating of 6 or higher with at least 10,000 votes. Ten titles were consistently the most popular with IMDb customers, as determined by the actual page views of the more than 250 million monthly visitors to IMDb worldwide. Vicky Kaushal-led Chhaava, the highest-grossing Indian film of the year, was at number 1 in the list, quite unsurprisingly. But the second spot went to Tamil sleeper hit, Dragon. The Pradeep Ranganathan-starrer coming-of-age comedy drama was made on a ₹35 crore budget and went on to gross over ₹150 crore at the box office. The film generated immense buzz upon its release and later OTT release, leading to such a high spot in the list.
Dragon starred Pradeep in the titular role, along with Anupama Parameswaran, Kayadu Lohar, Mysskin, Gautham Vasudev Menon, K. S. Ravikumar and George Maryan. The film received widespread acclaim and ended up being the highest-grossing Tamil film of 2025, before being surpassed by Good Bad Ugly.
{{/usCountry}}Dragon starred Pradeep in the titular role, along with Anupama Parameswaran, Kayadu Lohar, Mysskin, Gautham Vasudev Menon, K. S. Ravikumar and George Maryan. The film received widespread acclaim and ended up being the highest-grossing Tamil film of 2025, before being surpassed by Good Bad Ugly.
{{/usCountry}}The biggies that Dragon beat
Dragon was just behind Chhaava in IMDb's list of most popular films of 2025, but ahead of Shahid Kapoor's Deva, Ajay Devgn's Raid 2, Suriya's Retro, John Abraham's The Diplomat, Mohanlal's L2: Empuraan, Aamir Khan's Sitaare Zameen Par, Akshay Kumar's Kesari Chapter 2, and Ajith Kumar's VidaaMuyarchi. Interestingly, Salman Khan's Sikandar, one of the most anticipated films of the year, did not even make it to the top 10.