Table of Contents
South Indian movies
We have been watching several big-budget South Indian movies either getting remade in Bollywood or getting directly released in Hindi as a Hindi dubbed version. This trend has brought new fandom for South actors in the North belt.
Veteran Bollywood Analyst cum Business Transformation Expert Hirav Shah says, “It’s not just the content, even the leading south actors choose films which connect with everyone. Be it Telugu stars like Allu Arjun, Prabhas, Mahesh Babu, NTR, and Ram Charan, or Tamil actors like Superstar Rajinikanth, Thalapathi Vijay, and Thala Ajith, people from diverse backgrounds love them. Now with increased popularity thanks to social media and OTT, South actors are becoming pan-India stars. After all, paisa vasool entertainment matters to the audience. So at the end of the day, it’s not about overtaking; it’s about content.“
Now, Hirav Shah brings you the list of South actors who gathered new fans and followers in the Hindi belt through their dubbed movies.
Prabhas
Prabhas, who was just restricted to Telugu cinema and never had his films dubbed into other languages, went on to become the overnight Indian Superstar with the success of the Baahubali Franchise. Directed by SS.Rajamouli, the film secured a blockbuster success in every language it got dubbed, and now he has become and brought Prabhas huge craze. Later, Prabhas emerged as one of the pan-India stars of the country, with several big-ticket pan-India films lined up.
Rana Daggubati
Rana Daggubati was earlier seen in some popular films and portrayed prominent roles in them before he could get popular as Bhallal Dev in the Baahubali series. Later, he continued to star in ‘Housefull 4’ and also featured in the film that was released during the pandemic ‘Haathi Mere Saathi’ and has a good lineup of projects in his kitty.
NTR
‘RRR’ actor Jr.NTR, a huge star in Telugu cinema,, has never ventured into other languages earlier. With Rajamouli’s RRR, NTR tasted superhit and gained popularity in other languages for the first time. The success of RRR will bring NTR more offers from Bollywood is what the moviegoers and his fans believe in.
Allu Arjun
Stylish star Allu Arjun who enjoyed a good fandom in Kerala right from his ‘Happy’ movie days, went on to bag a huge success in the form of ‘Pushpa-The Rise’ (Hindi version). Allu Arjun’s mannerisms in Pushpa are a trendsetter in the North belts. The expectations for the second part of Pushpa are very high among the North audience.
Ram Charan
Ram Charan made a direct Bollywood debut in the year 2013 with the remake of Amitabh Bachchan’s ‘Zanjeer,’ but after the film ended up as a huge disaster, Ram Charan returned to Tollywood. Now, with Rajamouli’s RRR, he now tasted success at the Bollywood box office.
Yash
Kannada star Yash made a huge impact with his Hindi dubbed ‘KGF’ and is now gearing up to release his Hindi version of ‘KGF-2’ on April 14th. After KGF Chapter 1, Yash got a huge following among the North audience.
Hirav Shah concludes by saying, “There is a gold rush down south right now, and that rush is called the North Indian market. The thing is that Bollywood has left a void and, over the years, has become very elite, very niche. It has forgotten its core audiences that made the film industry what it is today. These audiences belong to small towns in India. Bollywood stopped talking to them and dismissed them, and no films were targeted there. Once in a while, a Salman Khan or Tiger Shroff film comes. Very few action films would come to cater to that sensibility, and hence you lose your core audiences.“
