TV
The massive success of Kalki 2898 AD and Pushpa: The Rule in 2024 has once again established that the Bollywood audience has accepted the Southern actors as their own. Although Kalki 2898 AD’s first part was more about the stellar performance from Amitabh Bachchan, the box-office collections were because of Prabhas and Deepika Padukone.
Allu Arjun ’s Pushpa: The Rule released almost a month ago continues to mint money nationwide. What’s more, many shows of Baby John were canceled due to low response and were replaced by Allu Arjun’s superhit. Bollywood A-listers are still trying to decode why Southern superstars like Prabhas, Bunny, and Yash are ruling the Hindi film industry. In contrast, the B-town stars are failing even to get an average success.
Of course one of the reasons is that most of the movies from the South are rooted in their culture which is why they can immediately connect with the audience. However, one of the biggest reasons is that due to the dubbed releases of the regional movies, fans of movies are now equally acquainted with Yash’s Rockybhai and Prabhas’ Baahubali, similar to Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan or Salman Khan’s Tiger series.
After the release of Baahubali and its pan-India success most of the regional movies started dubbing in Hindi and the rights were sold to leading Hindi television channels and OTT platforms. During the COVID-19 pandemic when most of the population did not have anywhere to go, they watched these movies and got introduced to many Tamil and Telugu actors.
Importantly, the content of some of these movies and even the acting of their leading stars made a lot of impact on the Hindi-speaking audience and that is how in the last few years Allu Arjun and Yash gained pan-India recognition.
So now the Bollywood audience has a lot of choices and are no more dependent on the B-town actors for entertainment. That is why Allu Arjun and Rashmika’s Hindi version of Pushpa 2 can do much more business than Varun Dhawan’s Baby John.
