Stories, Emotions, Action, Star Power: Success formula of southern cinema

Hyderabad, April 30 (IANS): Emotions, strong content, captivating storytelling, great visual effects, breathtaking action scenes and star cast from across movie industries is what is making some multilingual films from South rock at the box-office in recent times and emerge as pan-India movies.
From ‘Baahubali’ to ‘KGF 2’, all the blockbusters have a common element of emotions while creativity by the filmmakers with the use of the state-of-the-art technology and action added to their success.
Filmmakers and others connected with Tollywood attribute the new trend of pan-India movies to the availability of various social media and OTT platforms helping the audience to make informed choices and the new means of communication facilitating fast spread of the word about movies with good stories irrespective of the languages they are made in.
They hailed the new trend which removed the language barrier and offered a level-playing field to regional film industries and the actors and artists. The filmmakers believe this trend augurs well for the new generation.
The trend of dubbing movies in multiple languages, including Hindi, and releasing simultaneously all over India started with ‘Baahubali: The Beginning’ (2015) directed by S. S. Rajamouli, who went beyond the Telugu states to tap other regional and Hindi markets and even international opportunities.
Two years later came its sequel ‘Baahubali 2: The Conclusion’ which broke all the records to emerge as the highest-grossing movie with reported collections of over Rs 500 crore in Hindi.
The two-part epic-fantasy franchise not only marked the arrival of Tollywood on the big platform but set a new trend of filmmaking in India. Though simultaneously made in Telugu and Tamil, it was dubbed in Malayalam and Hindi, targeting the entire Indian market. It dazzled movie lovers beyond boundaries and was even dubbed in Japanese, Russian and Chinese.
After Tollywood, it was the turn of Kannada film industry to continue the crossover trend with ‘KGF: Chapter 1’ in 2018. Written and directed by Prashanth Neel and starring Yash in the lead, it brought recognition to Kannada industry, which was not considered strong like Telugu and Tamil film industries.
Like ‘Baahubali-2’, the sequel of KGF ‘KGF: Chapter 2’ broke new records to become third highest grosser in Hindi in two weeks.
‘KGF: Chapter 2’, released in Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu, also stars Sanjay Dutt and Raveena among many others.
Tollywood continued its march in the new trend with director Sukumar’s ‘Pushpa: The Rise’ featuring superstar Allu Arjun in the lead. Released pan-India in December 2021, the film has already grossed a whopping Rs 365 crore. ‘Pushpa-2’ , which is set to commence production soon, is expected to follow in the footsteps of ‘Baahubali’ and ‘KGF’ series.