The Pushpa myth explodes, South films do miserable business in Hindi

The classic Pushpa may hate tears(as Rajesh Khanna’s iconic dialogue in Amar Prem suggests). But the modern-day Pushpa laughed all the way to the bank. The Telugu film of that title raked in the moolah as if there was no tomorrow even in its dubbed Hindi avatar. Suffering from a serious Bollywood malady called the herd mentality, a slew of Southern superstars have lined up their films for release in dubbed Hindi avatars. However, the Hindi market has not welcomed the post-Pushpa South Indian releases. Two major South Indian releases in the last two weeks Khiladi in Telugu featuring superstar Ravi Teja and Valimai in Tamil featuring the iconic Ajith, have crashed woefully in their dubbed Hindi versions. Both the films have done roaring business in their home states but recorded abysmal collections in Hindi. According to box-office figures available to this writer from a multiplex chain, the collection for the dubbed Hindi version of Valimai on the day of release was as low as Rs 25 lakhs, while Khiladi was even lower. What went wrong? According to Maharashtra’s leading film exhibitor Akshay Rathi, “Those films have not done well because the North Indian audiences’ awareness about those films was not significant. Any South Indian film whether in Tamil Telugu Malayalam or Kannada, needs to hit the Hindi belt after big-time promotions. Today a lot of these South Indian stars have a pan-India audience. However, it is still imperative that they come accompanied by a significant amount of publicity.” Says producer and trade analyst Girish Johar, “The Hindi audiences connected with the storyline and characters of Pushpa. It was very desi heartland for them. Whereas other films, which have been released recently, are very regular stuff for Hindi audiences. Also, there is a constant flow of Bollywood releases, so the options are wide and first preference goes to the local native language.” All eyes are now on Prabhas’ hugely expensive love story Radhe Shyam a Telugu film that will get a massive release in Hindi on 11 March. If that fails to work—and Prabhas’s previous film Saaho was a dud in Hindi– the dubbed South Indian films in Hindi are in trouble. The writer is a Patna-based journalist. He’s been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out.