Pan-India promise, patchy payoff: Why many southern Hindi dubs are failing
A decade ago, they were hailed as a bridge between north and south India. But pan-India films have not quite lived up to that promise. The successes, few in number, are genuine blockbusters. But the failures—there are way too many of them—crash and burn ignominiously.
New Delhi: For as long as movie buffs can remember, Salman Khan has been the undisputed king of the Eid box office. In 2015, however, a week before the release of his cross-border emotional drama Bajrangi Bhaijaan for the festive weekend, the unthinkable happened.
A Telugu film, dubbed in Hindi and featuring names no one had heard of, took cinemas across north India by storm, squeezing theatres and competing for eyeballs. Directed by S.S. Rajamouli, a filmmaker then unknown in the Hindi belt, Baahubali: The Beginning sparked what could only be described as madness in theatres.
With opening day earnings of ₹5.15 crore, the larger-than-life project with its Mahabharat and Amar Chitra Katha-inspired storytelling, ended its first week in North Indian theatres with over ₹46 crore. By the end of its northern run, it would rake in nearly ₹120 crore. The epic action film, reportedly the most expensive Indian production at the time of release, had been made with a budget of ₹180 crore. Its overall collection across languages stood at ₹650 crore.
Baahubali’s success was an unprecedented feat for dubbed southern fare that was until then ridiculed for over-the-top theatrics and relegated to satellite television channels.
In the two years that Rajamouli took to come up with the second instalment, the question ‘Why Katappa killed Baahubali?’ emerged not just as a source of pan-Indian curiosity—feeding countless memes and jokes—but also spearheaded the film’s promotional campaign, with the ‘WKKB’ hashtag trending on social media. The gamble paid off; in 2017, Baahubali 2 crossed ₹1,000 crore in world box-office earnings across the four languages—Hindi, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam—it released in. To put that in perspective, no Indian movie had until then even come close to earning ₹1,000 crore.
“Nothing has ever stopped regional cinema. There is no reason why a story that works in Telugu should not work in Hindi unless it’s really region-specific, because ultimately many of those films are remade successfully. So it’s clear that content is travelling," actor Rana Daggubati, who played a key role in Baahubali, told Mint in an earlier interview.
Daggubati spoke from experience. In 2012, his father, Daggubati Suresh Babu was one of the producers of Eega (Rajamouli’s previous film). “We really believe it was a lost opportunity since it was not given the right platform at that point because we didn’t know any better," the actor had said in the same interview.
In the 10 years since the release of the first instalment, Rajamouli’s two-part war epic franchise, which opened the floodgates for southern films in the Hindi belt, has made what has famously been termed the trend of ‘pan-India’ movies. These are films originally made by the southern industries, primarily Telugu. They are peppered with action, larger-than-life visual effects and melodramatic storytelling, and are dubbed in Hindi and other south Indian languages, backed by a marketing and distribution strategy akin to a Bollywood movie.
These films easily filled the void left by Bollywood, which had increasingly begun to cater to upmarket, metro audiences, especially post 2010.
After Baahubali, there have been other success stories. There is Allu Arjun-starrer Pushpa, the dubbed Hindi version of whose first part earned over ₹108 crore, setting the stage for the blockbuster success of the second instalment, which made over ₹800 crore and is currently the second-highest grossing Hindi film (ironically not originally made in the language). There is also Rajamouli’s own period action drama RRR ( ₹274.31 crore) and Kannada franchises KGF and Kantara.
However, the wave has faced its own challenges along the way. For one, with the exception of Pushpa, KGF and Kantara, bona fide successes remain few, and far too many filmmakers have jumped on the pan-India movie bandwagon, dishing out films that don’t justify the marketing expense.
Further, bridging the gap between northern and southern cultural sensibilities remains tough with many films ending up neither here nor there. With an overreliance on action and period dramas with little innovation, an important deterrent remains the over-the-top (OTT) window, where southern, particularly Tamil films, premiere online within four weeks, as a result of which national multiplex chains refuse to screen their Hindi versions in the north, depriving many films wide enough access in the Hindi belt.
Given the unpredictability of the box office and the fact that audiences are now as selective about what to watch from the south as they are when it comes to films made by the Mumbai industry, will the pan-India movie wave, which started with a bang, end in a whimper?
Intention, not design
According to a 2023 report by media consulting firm Ormax, the number of southern films releasing theatrically in Hindi quadrupled between 2019 and 2022-23. However, out of the 42 Hindi dubs released from January 2020 till August 2023, only nine had managed to cross a lifetime box office of ₹15 crore in Hindi.
“Not every film can appeal across languages and regions. Some are deeply rooted and culturally specific to the southern state they come from and are difficult for others to follow and appreciate," said Shobu Yarlagadda, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Arka Mediaworks, the company that produced the Baahubali films. “While you can only realize this in retrospect, when you see some films do well and manage a connect across markets, everyone feels they have a chance."
Several big star vehicles have borne the brunt of such misfires; in 2022, Telugu superstar Chiranjeevi’s Godfather finished at ₹10.49 crore in the Hindi belt while in 2025, Kamal Haasan’s Thug Life earned ₹1.56 crore.
Many others have not been able to build on previous successes. In 2024, Telugu actor Teja Sajja saw his mythological superhero flick Hanu-Man clock over ₹57 crore in the Hindi belt with no promotions or marketing. When Sajja returned in 2025 with Mirai, another film in the same genre, it failed to draw interest, ending with less than ₹18 crore.
As recently as this month, a little over a decade since the release of Baahubali: The Beginning, lead actor Prabhas’s horror fantasy The Raja Saab opened to empty houses, with the Hindi version having made a little over ₹12 crore at last count.
Incidentally, the Hindi version of Baahubali: The Epic, a combined, shortened version of the two-part franchise that was released last year, earned ₹6.13 crore at the box office.
All box office numbers have been sourced from Bollywood Hungama, a trade website.
Just large-scale action is no longer enough for audiences, who are looking for something more unique and imaginative, according to Shailesh Kapoor, founder and CEO, Ormax Media. Further, while southern films have traditionally enjoyed an audience base in Maharashtra and central India thanks to some overlap in native speakers, Kapoor said the real breakthrough takes place when movies find traction in North Indian markets such as Delhi, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. “That needs a different marketing mix, which puts (financial) pressure on the producer, unless the film finds an audience organically," he explained.
In the past, mega-budget southern films such as RRR, Pushpa and Ponniyin Selvan have seen producers and studios actively upping their game for the Hindi-speaking belt. Those moves included targeting popular Hindi TV shows such as Bigg Boss and The Kapil Sharma Show and collaborating with influencers better known in North India for content on YouTube and Instagram. Radio and outdoor advertising, too, are common tactics, aside from press interactions and multi-city tours starting from Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi, Bengaluru and going on to Mumbai and Delhi.
In 2024, Arjun flew down to Patna in Bihar for a special trailer launch event for Pushpa 2. For a film made for ₹100 crore, producers have to spend an additional ₹20-25 crore on marketing, entertainment industry experts say. However, that isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
The OTT hurdle
Yet another hurdle arises from the fact that national multiplex chains such as PVR Inox and Cinepolis, among others, have refused to screen the Hindi versions of some South Indian films in North India amid a row over OTT window policies, restricting the reach of southern films in Hindi. The gap between a film's theatrical release and OTT premiere was usually eight weeks in India, before the covid-19 pandemic struck in 2020, when movies began to be released on streaming platforms first as cinemas remained shuttered for months.
Exhibitors had expected the old equilibrium to return once the pandemic ended, but that has not happened uniformly across Indian language films, with many filmmakers, particularly in Tamil and Malayalam, opting for an OTT release window shorter than eight weeks.
In the past, films featuring big stars such as Vijay (Leo, The Greatest Of All Time) did not see Hindi language releases in the north after securing lucrative streaming deals for agreeing to a four-week window.
More recently, while the southern versions of Kannada film Kantara: A Legend Chapter 1 were available on OTT within four weeks of theatrical release, the Hindi version, which received wide showcasing across multiplex chains, only began streaming after eight weeks. Around the same time though, makers of some mid-budget Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam movies such as The Girlfriend and Kaantha refrained entirely from an aggressive distribution and marketing push in North India.
Industry experts emphasize that for a film made for ₹15-20 crore or less, the marketing costs in the Hindi-speaking markets can easily exceed the production budget. Without strong recognition for actors in the Hindi market, it becomes tough to drive first-day footfalls. So, even when a film is dubbed, producers prefer to stay focused on home states where they’re confident of steady recovery, besides banking on robust OTT sales.
“It (the OTT window) is definitely part of the problem because multiplexes will not screen the Hindi versions of these films. That said, many of the bigger films have waited and agreed to longer windows. After all, not every film is meant to cross over the same way," said Rahul Puri, managing director of Mukta Arts and Mukta A2 Cinemas.
Can Bollywood go pan India?
While southern films are still grappling with a chequered track record in the Hindi belt, throwing up hits every once in a while, tentpole Bollywood movies have mostly proven to be damp squibs in South India. Other than action film Jawan (directed by Tamil filmmaker Atlee and featuring southern actors Nayanthara and Vijay Sethupathi), no recent Hindi movie has managed to draw big numbers in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and, to an extent, Karnataka. These were once lucrative markets for commercial films featuring top stars such as Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan.
Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan, which earned over ₹512 crore in domestic box office collections, fetched less than ₹18 crore from Tamil Nadu and Kerala together, and another ₹38 crore from the Telugu-speaking states. Ranbir Kapoor-starrer Animal clocked over ₹462 crore across India, but only ₹6.81 crore from Tamil Nadu and Kerala and about ₹40.22 crore from the Telugu states.
The latest Bollywood blockbuster Dhurandhar, which had earned over ₹860 crore domestically at last count, had only made ₹52.61 crore from the Telugu-speaking states, and a little over ₹9 crore from Tamil Nadu and Kerala together.
Trade experts say southern audiences prefer films in their native languages that cater to mass-market tastes organically, while Hindi films often target multiplex audiences with experimental storylines and are only beginning to rediscover their commercial sensibilities.
Further, the allure of southern films is heavily tied to their charismatic stars and popular music, while Bollywood stars seem overexposed and typecast. South Indian dubs of Hindi films, therefore, don’t really penetrate down south the way Hindi dubs of southern films do.
“Bollywood may have been able to connect with the elite urban audiences in the south who follow Hindi, but the films don’t resonate with the psychographics and emotions of people beyond the big cities of Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Viewers there already have their own supply of massy films," said independent exhibitor Vishek Chauhan. “On the other hand, Bollywood is making few mass-market films, and they are similar to those made in the south. That makes for a double whammy."
- Pan-India movies are essentially action-packed southern films dubbed in Hindi
- The trend gained momentum after Baahubali’s success in 2015
- With Bollywood largely catering to metro audiences, there was a big gap in the entertainment space, which the southern films filled with mass-appeal content
- The pan-India wave faces challenges. Not every film can appeal across languages and regions
- Some are culturally specific and difficult for others to appreciate
- National multiplex chains have refused to screen the Hindi versions of some south Indian films in north India amid a row over OTT window policies
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