Why South Indian film industry has an edge over Bollywood to capture the national market

South Indian movies especially the Telugu movie industry has started the post-pandemic era with a bang and cemented their presence at the national level. This is a very bullish trend and more southern movies would attempt to achieve this feat in the future. Bahubali started the trend, then came Bahubhali 2, Saaho, Pushpa and now RRR. The Karnataka movie industry has also tasted blood with KGF 1 and 2 and to a certain extent. Even the Tamil film industry has tried making this transition with 2.0. This just shows that in the last couple of years every actor, director and now production house worth their salt from down south will try to cross the rubicon and reach out to a larger audience domestically. What one can infer from this is very clear, every regional movie is aware that there is a Rs 1,000 crore box office market up for grabs and every movie coming from the southern stable wants to capture this number. There is no doubt that a substantial number of these movies won’t make that transition however the majority of these movies will attempt to do so since the cost vs benefit ratio is completely in their favour. In terms of distribution and marketing, the cost is minuscule as compared to the rewards that they can reap from their movie which in turn spikes the satellite and digital rights for their movies. This is where lies the dichotomy between Hindi and regional movies. Hindi movies will have to think about how to expand their market, especially in south India which has close to half the exhibition screens in India. The reason being even the highest collection for the Hindi movie Dangal was approx Rs 375 crore and insignificant in any of the southern markets. This is the Achilles’ heel for Hindi movies since they will have to come up with options to boost their box office numbers in southern markets. Southern movies have made a smooth transition to the north of India, vice versa cannot be said of Hindi movies making a dent in the south. Bollywood will have to double down, though they are taking steps in the form of national-level actors joining hands with regional directors. However, they will have to do more than that to cultivate a loyal audience for their movies. Keep in mind that the box office collections also have a bearing on ancillary rights like satellite and digital since this could go south as well if the performance of the Hindi box office starts plateauing. All this boils down to a burning ambition and hunger to grow combined with risk management commensurate to reward ratio from a financial perspective. South has deciphered this math well and in the Indian market which has the largest number of movies released and the lowest density of screen per million population, the release window is going to get further competitive and South clearly has a very strong headstart to take the Indian film industry forward. The authors are co-founder and managing partner, NV Capital. Views are personal. Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.