2025 has turned out to be a challenging year for Tamil cinema in overseas markets, especially in North America, where even the biggest star-led movies have struggled to achieve profitability, and suffered heavy losses. 

Rajinikanth - Lokesh Kanagaraj’s Coolie, this year’s highest-grossing Tamil film globally, exemplifies this trend. While Coolie performed decently at the worldwide box office, the overseas recovery was below expectations. In some territories, Coolie suffered outright losses, while in others, it barely broke even. Factoring in the high expenditure on overseas promotions, Coolie's overall overseas performance is average at best.

Ajith’s Good Bad Ugly faced a situation similar to Coolie, with inflated overseas rights sales leading to a difficult recovery through theatrical collections. Ajith's Vidaamuyarchi, Suriya-Karthik Subbaraj’s Retro, and  Vikram’s Veera Dheera Sooran: Part 2 also ended up as loss ventures in overseas territories, with Retro in particular registering little recovery, in comparison to the expectations. 

Kamal Haasan and Mani Ratnam’s much-anticipated reunion Thug Life was among the biggest disappointments of 2025 in international markets, recording a complete washout overseas, despite its star-studded lineup and high pre-release expectations.

What stands out is that even an established overseas crowd-puller like Superstar Rajinikanth could not insulate his movie Coolie from losses in 2025. North America, traditionally a lucrative hub for Tamil cinema, has seen diminishing returns this year, raising concerns over the sustainability of inflated overseas deals for big-budget projects.

Interestingly, smaller Tamil films have performed relatively better abroad. Movies like Dragon (Pradeep Ranganathan), the Pandiraj directed Thalaivan Thalaivii (Vijay Sethupathi, Nithya Menen), and Sasikumar, Simran starrer Tourist Family managed to turn in respectable box-office overseas. However, given the limited scale of these mid-sized Tamil films, the profit margins remained far below the potential of star-driven Kollywood movies.