As Hindi version of Pushpa touches 100 cr, will south films pose a threat to Bollywood?

After creating ripples at the box office, the Hindi version of the Pushpa: The Rise achieved a new feat as it recently entered the ₹100 crore club. As a plethora of pan-Indian projects like RRR, Radhe Shyam, Salaar, Liger, Khiladi, Shaakuntalam, Valimai and KGF: Chapter 2, are lined up for release, conversations on whether star-studded multilingual films will pose a stiff competition to Hindi films, have resurfaced.

Manish Shah, who holds the Hindi rights of the Allu Arjun starrer action drama, feels that this will nudge the Hindi film industry to pull up their socks. “South films are going to pose an extremely big threat to Hindi films. The former has been doing much better than Hindi films on satellite. An extension of that is now being reflected in the box office,” says Shah, as he places his bet on actors Ram Charan, Vijay and Jr NTR to be the next big pan-Indian stars.

Producer of Ajith starrer Valimai, Boney Kapoor believes that the south film industry continues to helm family-oriented content with a mass appeal and that does the trick: “Their films are high on heroism laced with action, drama and comedy. They still believe in larger-than-life cinema. This helps them reach out to masses. I feel both south and Hindi cinema has the power to pull the crowd as long the intent of the story is right.”

According to actor Rana Daggubati, there’s no competition between both the industries and if anything, the coming together of both the worlds will bring about diversity to the cinematic landscape: “Pan-Indian films are contributing to a greater and a larger ecosystem of content coming from India. Language is not a barrier now.”

Sharing a similar sentiment, Salaar actor Shruti Haasan thinks it’s about time “South cinema is accepted as part of the business”. “We’ve been seeing this [south films gaining national prominence] for the longest time. I grew up in a multicultural home and saw my father’s (actor-politician Kamal Haasan) film Indian (1996) and (actor) Rajinikanth sir’s Robot (2010) cut across [borders]. And we understand what that means in terms of market and artistic integrity,” she elaborates.

Trade analyst Ramesh Bala agrees with Shah and Kapoor, and adds that south-origin films are able to appeal to that section of the audience who “are neglected by the traditional Hindi market”. “Bollywood, in the last few years, has moved towards niche films. There are very few movies made for tier two and three cities, barring the ones headlined by (actors) Salman Khan and Ajay Devgn. While (actor) Aamir Khan makes films for the multiplex audience, (actors) Taapsee Pannu, Rajkummar Rao and Ayushmann Khurrana have a certain reach and their films won’t collect ₹300 crore. Films like KGF: Chapter 1 (2018), Baahubali series and now Pushpa struck a chord with the Hindi belt as they successfully catered to the mass audience,” he ends.