The Most Bankable Stars in Bollywood Since 1994

When it comes to delivering hits over the past 28 years, Salman Khan leads all actors in collections, and Akshay Kumar in number of films and frequency of appearance. The four superstars — Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan and Akshay Kumar — still dominate, but the pool of actors delivering hits is growing. As is the number of women leads (though it’s still a far, far cry from parity). Even adjusted for inflation, films are collecting a whole lot more and the contribution from overseas markets is growing. This data interactive shows inflation-adjusted theatre collections for the 10 highest-grossing Hindi films of each year since 1994. Click / tap on the images of the superstars or search for an actor to explore further.

Data visualisation: howindialives.com

Collections, adjusted for inflation

Top-10 grossing films: 280 | Total Collections: Rs 69,825 Cr Domestic Collections: Rs 51,656 Cr Overseas Collections: Rs 17,637 Cr

Size shows film earnings
Methodology
1. Data on box-office collections of top films was available from 1994 onwards. Or, 28 years. For each year, we considered the top 10 films by total collections (sum of domestic and overseas). This listing doesn’t include films dubbed in Hindi (like Bahubali). Further, we placed these films in 4 buckets of 7 years each. A theatre ticket today costs many times more than what it did in, say, 1994. To enable comparison across time, we adjusted collections of older films for inflation.

Data sources
Bollywood Hungama (film collections data), IMDB (film cast information) and Reserve Bank of India (inflation data)