South Indian cinema takes over Bollywood in box office revenues

LAHORE: Numerous Indian film industry experts believe the country’s cinema in South and its actors are not far from taking over Bollywood though a few assert regional films are already calling the shots if box office revenues are a yardstick to measure the successes in this context.

According to industry estimates, the South Indian film industry (Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada) clocked Indian Rs1,040 crore (equivalent to Pak Rupees 2442.86 crore) as compared to Hindi speaking markets where box office collection had stood at Indian Rs870 crore (Pak Rs2043.61 crore) in 2020, reveals the “Financial Express” in one of its January 2021 editions.

Eminent German data website “Statista,” which contains more than 1,000,000 statistics on more than 80,000 topics from more than 22,500 sources and 170 different industries, and generates a revenue of about €60 million writes: “South Indian films generated a revenue of 12.3 billion Indian rupees (Pak Rs 28.89 billion) in that year, compared to 39 billion rupees (Pak Rs 91.61 billion) in 2019. Bollywood films suffered an even greater decrease, bringing in just 9.3 billion rupees in 2020. The year 2020 saw box office revenues across all segments of the Indian film industry fall drastically compared to the previous years.”

In July 2020, the “Financial Express” had revealed: “The Hindi film segment is estimated to have registered a record Indian Rs4,350 crore in net box office collections in 2019. Box office collections are no doubt big in Bollywood but of late regional films are calling the shots. Led by the Tamil and Telugu film industries, regional cinema contributed a chunky 47% to the film industry’s overall revenues in 2019 while Bollywood’s share of the pie stood at 40%, according to Deloitte-MPA.

The Indian film industry is expected to clock in estimated revenues of $4.3 billion (approximately Rs 33,000 crore) by FY24 from $2.7 billion in FY19.” The “India Today” writes: “South cinema is done being second-best to Bollywood. If you are a Salman Khan fan, you’d remember that Bhaijaan of Bollywood became ‘Bhai' through one of his blockbuster films, Wanted, a remake of the Telugu film Pokiri. It looks like South cinema is done being second-best to Bollywood.” Most Pakistanis might not know that celebrated Bollywood actresses like Aishwarya Rai, Deepika Padukone, Shilpa Shetty, Waheeda Rehman, Vyjayanthi Mala, Meenakshi Seshadri, Vidya Balan, Madhubala, Tabu, Jayapradha, Sushmitha Sen, Dia Mirza, Hema Malini, Rekha and late Sridevi etc actually hailed from the Indian South!

According to the “Forbes” magazine, the three South Indian actors Rajinikanth (Indian Rs100 crores), AR Rahman (Indian Rs 94.8 crores) and Mohanlal (Indian Rs 64.5 crores) were getting paid way more than Bollywood stars in 2019.

The “Forbes” had released its 2019 annual Celebrity 100 List, according to which, 13 stars from the South Indian film industry were part of it. In 2019, the total earnings of eight Kollywood (Tamil) superstars, three Tollywood (Telugu) stars and two Mollywood (Malayalam cinema) icons brought in a total of Indian Rs 482.92 crore.

Research shows the Indian cinema produces more than 1,800 movies annually. As of 2018, India was ranked first in terms of annual film output. In 2015, India had a total box office gross of US$2.1 billion, the third largest in the world. The overall revenue of Indian cinema had rested US$2.7 billion in 2019.

By 2020, the combined revenue of all the South Indian film industries (Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam) had surpassed that of the Hindi film industry. And by 2021, the Telugu cinema had emerged as the largest film industry in terms of box-office. According to media outlets like the Times of India and the Hindustan Times etc, South Indian films, including those in the Tamil and Telugu languages, would lead box office collections in 2021, with a 50% plus share – reversing the earlier trend where Hindi films used to lead the pack.