SOUTHERN SPICE

SOUTH INDIAN CINEMA IS REDEFINING HOW REGIONAL FILMS CAN TRANSCEND LANGUAGE BARRIERS AND BECOME PAN-INDIA WITH QUALITY CONTENT, BIG BUDGETS, AND GLOBAL PROMOTIONS.

- NEVIN JOHN AND P.B. JAYAKUMAR

THE BRITISH-AMERICAN filmmaker Christopher Nolan, who has directed a dozen Hollywood hits from Memento to the recent Oppenheimer, once said, “A camera is a camera, a shot is a shot. How you tell the story is the main thing.” Today’s film technicians and storytellers from the southern part of India regard Nolan as a master. Having figured out how to tell their story for a national audience reaching the Hindi belt, the new generation of technicians, producers, and storytellers is now aiming for Hollywood blockbusters and the red carpet at the Oscars. They are backed by investors willing to bet on big-budget films and innovative marketing strategies.

No more clichéd story lines, with actors aiming for vote banks. As Karan Johar, a top Bollywood director and producer, said recently, “Beginning with Baahubali: The Beginning, whether streaming in OTT or theatres, the whole of North India is now consuming South Indian content, whether Telugu, Kannada, Tamil or Malayalam films—admiring it, uploading it and accepting it. And they are doing the numbers. This is the biggest crossover.” Johar was speaking at WAVES, the World Audio Visual & Entertainment Summit, organised in Mumbai in the first week of May to mainstream the Indian film and entertainment industry worldwide.

What were the numbers Johar was talking about? South Indian cinema dominated the box office, collecting ₹5,600 crore in 2024, of which Telugu led with ₹2,300 crore, followed by Tamil (₹1,800 crore), Malayalam (₹1,200 crore), and Kannada (₹300 crore), according to the Ficci-EY report 2025. South Indian movies' box office collections were higher than Bollywood's gross collection of ₹4,700 crore.

Hindi cinema's box office collections dropped from ₹5,400 crore to ₹4,700 crore in 2024, says the Ficci-EY report. Footfalls for Hindi cinema dropped by 16%, says Ormax Media's 2024 box office report.