Cinema of South India

Cinema of South India, refers to the cinema of the four major film industries in South India; primarily engaged in making feature films in the four major languages of the region, namely — Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. They are often colloquially referred to as Tollywood, Kollywood, Sandalwood and Mollywood, respectively.

Although the four industries developed independently for a long period of time, gross exchange of artists and technicians, as well as globalisation helped to shape this new identity.^[1] By 2010, South India became the home for 6320, or about 62% of the 10,167 cinema theatres in India.^[2]

In 2021, Telugu film industry emerged as the largest film industry of India in terms of box office revenue.^[3][4][5] In 2022, Telugu cinema represented 20% of Indian box office revenue, followed by Tamil representing 16%, Kannada representing 8%, and Malayalam representing 6%.^[6] As of 2022, the combined revenue of South Indian film industries has surpassed that of the Mumbai-based Hindi-language film industry (Bollywood).^[7][8]

Setting aside state language boundaries, recent years saw South Indian actors, writers and directors from Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada industries collaborating with each other as a single 'South Indian Cinema' entity to produce movies. This collaboration resulted in major hits such as Baahubali, KGF, Lokesh Cinematic Universe, Jailer, Pushpa, RRR, Kalki 2898 AD and Salaar. Film analysts say that this marks the beginning of the unification of a Pan-Indian film industry as one.^[9] After the emergence of South Indian Cinema, Hindi film actors and actresses who experienced a decline in their star value began participating in South Indian films to sustain their careers in the industry.^[10]