20 May 2023
Hyderabad

With RRR, Tollywood turned heads internationally and how! Naatu Naatu, one of the tracks from the film, went on to be revered all over the world, generating Instagram reels worldwide and winning major trophies like Golden Globe and the Academy Award. With pan-India success stories like Baahubali and Pushpa, Telugu industry has seen unprecedented growth especially in the last seven-odd years. And the budgets too have soared like never before. Now, there is a never before interest in Telugu cinema and what has it in store for the whole of India.

In this regard, Golden Globe has done a profile on Telugu cinema – from its birth, to matinee idols like NTR, Chiranjeevi, to how the industry shifted its base from Chennai to Hyderabad, to art house cinema like Daasi, Thiladaanam, to successful directors like Rajamouli, Trivikram, Sukumar and to how Telugu cinema was faster in staging a comeback after the pandemic than other industries.

The profile also threw light on how the media consulting firm Ormax estimates that Tollywood grossed $212 million last year, while Bollywood, in the same time period, made $197 million. Further, it indicated while there are other south industries like Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam, Telugu industry is leading from the front in winning the audience love with “with its epic films, some based on Indian mythology, with testosterone-laden heroes, over-the-top histrionics, frantic action scenes, and sophisticated special effects”.

As the Indian cinema market continues to grow significantly both internationally and domestically and with the ascent of streaming platforms, the report concluded, India’s regional language cinema will also grow exponentially, with Telugu cinema leading the charge.