Pan India fever grips Tollywood: Think Locally, Act Globally?

There was once a time when every top superstar in Tollywood used to race after commercial films that had strong regional content. But after Baahubali happened, the game changed forever, and every Tollywood superstar is now looking at pan Indian stardom.

The likes of Prabhas, Allu Arjun, Junior NTR and Ram Charan are already occupied with pan Indian prospects. If that is not enough, we have other youngsters like Vijay Devarakonda(Kingdom), Teja Sajja(Hanuman), Naga Chaitanya(Thandel) and others who are actively entering the pan Indian belt.

The point to be noted here is that every superstar in Tollywood and also upcoming stars are entirely focused on pan Indian subjects. In the process, they are blatantly ignoring the regional prospect of Telugu cinema and are steadily staying away from regional content.

This has led to a remark from upcoming writers and screen writers that Tollywood stars must surely be looking back at regional content in the near future. They are commenting that Tollywood must start following “Think locally, act globally” notion”.

For that to happen, our stars must first start to look at regional material and come up with router stories that primarily engage with the regional Telugu audience. Then the production and canvas can be amplified to suit the pan Indian audiences and their market demands.

The complaint from writers is that stars are now asking only for universal subjects with pan India appeal. They are complaining that this trend must change very soon and actors must start to embrace regional cinema, which made them what they are today. This is indeed a strong point to be noted, but bringing back our stars from the pan India craze and getting them back to regional content might be a tough task.