"Pan Indian" is a fairly new phrase that entered the daily dictionary of Indian film lovers about 10 years ago. It all started in 2015 and was released by the director of SS Rajamouli Baahubali: BeginThis is the first of two-part historical fantasy originally made in Telugu, which is spoken in the states of Telangana and Andhra Pardesh in southern India. The film took an immediate blow and by the end of the playback, the film had become the second highest Indian film ever, earning $80 million at the domestic box office.

until Baahubali: Beginfilms need not be called "pan-Indian" because it is believed that only the Hindi film industry (or Bollywood) can be known outside India - a movie that can be made can be made in the length and breadth of a country that is culturally and linguistically diverse.

In context, Telugu is just the fourth language in India after India, Bangladeshi and Marathi. Hindi has 520 million people speaking, while only 81 million pounds speak Telugu. However, Telugu films have been successful nationwide, becoming a general and all-inclusive “pan-Indian” and becoming part of popular culture.

The phrase can be roughly defined as a description of a product designed to cater to audiences in almost every group of people in India, a country with up to 22 official languages, 2,000 dialects and 1.4 billion people.

India is also the world's largest feature film producer, producing an average of 1,500 to 2,000 movies per year. The Hindi film industry is just one of the eight major film production industries in India, and the film is produced in other languages ​​such as Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Marathi and Punjab. While the Hindi film industry produces up to 300 movies per year, the Telugu film industry produces an average of 200 to 250 movies per year.

But with the release Bahabalithere is a strategy and luck - to make the first pan-Indian film. This is the first Telugu movie to play up to 4,000 screens worldwide. To achieve this, the film’s producer Arka Media Works, partnered with some of the largest distributors in each region to provide collaborations for the Hindi dubbed version. All of this is for movies with no recognizable stars for Hindi viewers, with budgets surging towards a $28 million pace.

“In hindsight, it’s not easy to explain the amount of risks we have to take.” BahabaliProducer of Shobu Yarlagadda of Arka Media Works. "For the months of production, we knew the budget would be so high that we needed the film to go beyond Telugu-speaking audiences to recover the shooting costs. However, we are not sure if Hindi audiences would come to the theater to watch movies with casts they don't know."

In addition to marketing and a strong distributor team Bahabali They chose the partners they worked with, and they also planned to dubb the Hindi one year before the release of the film. Yarlagadda added: "This is not the way other Telugu movies were praised at the time."

Two years later, the sequel to the movie, Baahubali 2: Conclusion, $25.16 million was charged on the first day of release RRRsurpassed it in 2022. Its impact is naturally wider than the box office figures.

grateful Bahabali In the film, dynamic dynamics began to transform from a large production studio in Mumbai (home of the Bollywood industry) to those in Hyderabad, where Telugu is the main language. According to media consulting firm Ormax, Hindi issued 341 million tickets in 2019, but by 2022, that number has fallen to 189 million. During the same period, Telugu movies changed from 182 million tickets sold to 233 million tickets.

“Total number of people viewed last year PUSHPA 2: Rules In Telugu, there are about 20 million," said Mukesh Manjunath, a Telugu film critic and writer. "The biggest Hindi movie this year, i.e. chhaavawhich was watched by about 25 to 30 million people. But when you add the number of people watching Pushpa 2 In both Hindi and Telugu versions, this is when you end up with a true pan-Indian movie. ” chhaava Ended a total of 28 million admissions, far below the 63 million people watched PUSHPA 2: Rules In all versions.

In addition to adding Hindi dubbing and wider distributions, another trend from a decade ago has begun to emerge: Bollywood is becoming a victim of its success and the class is becoming a key factor. Vishek Chauhan is the CEO of a series of cinemas, Roopbani Cinemas, located in Bihar, eastern India, and Bhojpuri is the most spoken language. Bihar is also one of the poorest states in India, with most of the population living in rural spaces. Chauhan said Bollywood’s work began to appear frequently in urban audiences, ignoring the daily reality of rural moviegoers, who he said were shut down by trying to imitate Hollywood-made Hindi films.

“You’ll find Hollywood’s sensibility even a big budget Hindi movie that’s been made today,” Manjunath said. “If you see (Bollywood release in 2023) Pathaanyou can see how it creates Indianization Mission: Impossible Idea of ​​super boobs with Earth-wide range. But the Telugu movies working nationwide still stem from Indian emotions and myths. They are not trying to imitate Hollywood. ”

The following Bahabali, Telugu distributions are steadily becoming people’s cinemas, but the main factor in this transformation is the ability of rural population to watch movies online. forward Bahabali Dru Hindi audiences enter the theater of Telugu movies, where thousands of movies across India are watching Telugu movies, known as Hindi, and now the world's largest YouTube channel dedicated to streaming feature films: Goldmines Telefilms: Goldmines Telefilms, a corporate show for entrepreneurs called Manish Shah. Shah founded the YouTube channel in the mid-2000s and is now the 10th largest channel in the world, with more than 100 million subscribers and an annual revenue of approximately $47 million.

According to Shah, audiences have watched Telugu movies on TV, or on mobile phones, or on drama audiences. Bahabali Released. "The audience is just waiting for that movie to attract enough to make them want to go to the cinema," he said. "They are with Bahabali Never went back since then. ”

Manjunath added: "Until ten years ago, Telugu cinemas were fired for their rough speeches or their overly unrealistic sequences of action that were considered too unrealistic. It has always been an escapist entertainment, but it has never deviated from the emotions that attract the average person."

The rise of Telugu movies may coincide with the view that Hindi filmmaking is particularly low, but Chauhan quickly notices that Bollywood is in a transitional period today.

"The problem today is that Hindi production companies are making movies that 90% of India's backyards don't want to watch," he said. "We are looking forward to the stage where the South Indian directors in the Telugu or Tamil film industry will make Hindi films with Hindi stars. Either way, with Telugu cinemas, all industries in India look like they will merge into one soon."

The story appears on May 7 of Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.