THE SOUTHERN JUGGERNAUT

HEAVY ON DRAMA, ACTION, AND EMOTIONAL CONNECT, AND POWERED BY SHARP STRATEGIES AROUND MULTI-LANGUAGE RELEASES, SOUTH INDIAN MOVIES ARE PULLING IN BIG BUCKS NEVER BEFORE IMAGINED IN INDIAN CINEMA

- VIDYA S. & PRERNA LIDHOO

PICTURE THIS. A PESKY HOUSEFLY BUZZES IN AND OUT OF YOUR EARS. YOU SWAT IT AND BRUSH IT ASIDE. BUT WHAT IF THIS FLY IS A VENGEFUL REINCARNATE, OUT TO AVENGE ITS MURDER IN A PREVIOUS BIRTH?

ABSURD IN REALITY, surely, but what of a movie? Even there, most people would laugh the idea off, but not S.S.Rajamouli. The director made a VFX-heavy, bilingual revenge saga out of it-Eega in Telugu and Naan Ee in Tamil and won the hearts of millions of filmgoers, with a small twist. Eega (meaning fly) was a box office super hit in the South, but the Hindi-dubbed Makkhi was a flop in the North.

It's a little like his own story. As a fly trying to get his film to more audiences, he was called a visionary for taking a Telugu film to Tamil Nadu (in Tamil), Karnataka (Kannada), and Kerala (Malayalam) for the first time. "At the same time, I was ridiculed because I went to the North with Eega and it didn't succeed there," says the 48-year-old director, appearing over a Zoom video call. A shock of salt-and-pepper hair complements a black Tshirt proudly proclaiming 'RRR', his most recent work, which set the cash registers ablaze. The fictitious tale about two real-life Indian revolutionaries in the pre-Independence era grossed  ₹1,111 crore worldwide, including