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.”
This story is from the February 21, 2022 edition of India Today.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the February 21, 2022 edition of India Today.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Grand Young Master
Seventeen-yearold D. Gukesh has become the youngest player to win the Candidates chess tournament
SPORTING SPIRIT
BADMINTON PLAYER ASHWINI PONNAPPA, 34, IS OFF TO HER THIRD OLYMPICS, THIS TIME WITH A NEW PARTNER, TANISHA CRASTO
PORTRAITS OF A PEOPLE
Etchings by the colonial Flemish artist F. Baltazard Solvyns are getting a new lease of life in an exhibition at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai
Centennial Man
A seminal exhibition of K.G. Subramanyan's works in his birth centenary year at Emami Art, Kolkata takes an imaginative and immersive curatorial approach
Rhythms of Nature
ARTIST AND MUSIC COMPOSER GINGGER SHANKAR'S LATEST SINGLE COMBINES SOUTH INDIAN MUSIC WITH INUIT THROAT SINGING
SEARCHING FOR THE SOUND
Kashmiri musician Faheem Abdullah’s debut album Lost; Found is a collaborative effort
FOUND IN TRANSLATION
With its excellent translations, Songs of Tagore makes Rabindrasangit accessible to the non-Bengali reader
Of Freedom and Friendship
T.C.A. RAGHAVAN'S CIRCLES OF FREEDOM FOLLOWS THREE YOUNG MUSLIMS DRAWN INTO THE FREEDOM STRUGGLE
The Razor's Edge
Salman Rushdie's Knife is an eloquent, first-person account of the horrific attack on him. It's also a love story
THE LAST-MILE PUSH
The India Today Smart Money Financial Summit had top experts discussing how technology could be leveraged to widen the reach of personal finance tools