While all other regional film industries have seen an increase in footfalls and growth in revenue, Tamil films have witnessed a downward spiral in terms of growth numbers.
India's large film production market gets a major push from a healthy regional film base, with 29 full-fledged regional film industries. South India is the single-largest regional market, with all four regional languages gaining a strong audience reception, according to a report prepared by FICCI-EY.
The report said the Telugu film segment clocked a 47 per cent growth rate in the net domestic collection in 2017, at Rs 15.33 billion, against 10.42 billion in 2016. A major chunk of that came from Baahubali 2: The conclusion, a Tamil-Telugu bilingual dubbed in Hindi, which contributed Rs 2.85 billion.
Footfalls for Telugu cinema rose by 37 per cent to 240 million from 175 million and Baahubali 2 alone accounted for 43 million.
Another movie that helped the Telugu industry was blockbuster romantic drama Arjun Reddy, a modern Telugu language take on Devdas. Other blockbusters include Pelli Choopulu, Ghazi and PSV Garuda Vega from the Telugu film industry.