Opinion: Telugu Films Driving Big-Budget Wave

Indian cinema is entering another phase these days, with big-budget films now targeting even a release in Hollywood, like how English movies are hoping big in Indian market these days. If we look at some of the big-budget films that are coming up, barring a couple of projects, it looks like South films are almost driving this entire wave. Here’s an interesting insight.

At the top of the big-budget films sits Ramayana, with the first part reportedly being made under a staggering ₹2,200 crore budget. Immediately after that, Telugu cinema takes over as Rajamouli’s Varanasi is mounted on an almost ₹1,300 crore scale. Raaka follows with around ₹800 crore budget, while Kalki 2 is being made in the ₹700 crore range. The likes of Dragon, Fauzi and Spirit are also being planned on budgets touching ₹500 crore or around that. That means, literally, almost all the flicks that are budgeted more than ₹500 crore are from the South, and mostly from the Telugu arena only. Even Toxic falls in this category, while it's a Kannada film dubbed into almost all the film languages.

With almost all the films carrying exceptional buzz, another interesting thing to be noted is that, all these films are being targeted by movies that have a scale of around ₹200-300 crore range. After the likes of Baahubali, KGF, Pushpa, RRR and Kalki 2898 AD changed the economics and proved that regional cinema can create nationwide euphoria, Telugu cinema took a giant leap to cater to this market. Surely the big-budget trend that’s being followed by the likes of Bollywood is a trend that’s actually set by Telugu films.