SOUTH SIDE STORY

BOLLYWOOD REMAKES OF SOUTH INDIAN FILMS HAVE LONG BEEN A TREND. NOW, THE MULTI-GENRE ENTERTAINERS FROM THE SOUTH ARE CHALLENGING HINDI FILMS ON THEIR OWN TURF

- SUHANI SINGH

Manish Shah, director and chairman of Goldmines Telefilms, a production house, knew he had an ace up his sleeve when he acquired the Hindi rights—satellite, digital and theatrical—to Telugu film Pushpa: The Rise - Part 1. The seeds of Pushpa’s success, he says, were sown seven years ago. The Mumbai-based producer had noticed how the Hindi-dubbed versions of Tamil and Telugu films were doing well on TV channels like Star Gold and Sony Max. He also noticed the growing popularity of Allu Arjun on digital—it was evident on Goldmines Films’ YouTube channel, where the Telugu star’s films had cumulatively amassed 1.2 billion views. The theatrical success of Pushpa’s Hindi-dubbed version— which has entered the Rs 100 crore club—was inevitable.

Shah, who has been acquiring ‘South films’ for satellite release for 14 years now, also attributes Pushpa’s pan-India success in part to Hindi cinema’s failure to entertain audiences. “Mass action film hum Hindi mein bana hi nahin rahe [we just aren’t making mass action films in Hindi],” he bemoans. One Rohit Shetty film isn’t enough, he says, and Salman Khan’s films lack “content”. “Action is not simply about having a hero beat 10 people up. It needs to be entertaining, have good dialogue and songs.” Tamil and Telugu filmmakers offer “more action and scale”, while Hindi filmmakers, he feels, are alienating audiences outside the metros. “Hindi film directors stay between Andheri and Bandra [suburbs in Mumbai] and for them the world revolves around these areas,” he quips. “They have grown up watching English films and Netflix and they think that is moviemaking. That’s not so.”