The Rise of ‘Tollywood

A fast-rising parallel film industry in India is competing with Bollywood’s musicals and action-packed films and has taken the world by storm: It’s called Tollywood.

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As Mumbai is to Hindi films — or Bollywood — the southern Indian city of Hyderabad is to movies made in Telugu, one of the country’s most widely spoken languages.

Tollywood primarily operates out of Hyderabad, which is home to Ramoji Film City. The 1,666-acre (674-hect-are) facility, recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest film studio complex, houses massive film studio complexes, dozens of production houses, warehouses, movie sets and post-production facilities. The industry churns out around 300 films every year — fewer than Bollywood but still enough to make it one of India’s largest regional industries.

Tollywood’s growing exposure was in large part sparked by the coronavirus pandemic, as the rapid expansion of streaming services in India allowed regional films to find wider audiences. That expansion also coincided with Bollywood’s struggle to lure audiences back to theaters amid repetitive story-lines and rehashes of hits from other languages.

What has also worked in favor of Tollywood is that it offers a rare balance of high-octane action films and nuanced movies charged with real human drama.