Bollywood stars falter as South Indian movies crack the box-office code

Larger-than-life movies' full value is offered only on a big screen, say experts; for other movies, consumers prefer to wait for their OTT release

Bollywood’s fabled male stars — Akshay Kumar, Ranveer Singh, Ajay Devgn, Amitabh Bachchan — are not pulling in the audiences as the movies they have released in the first five months of this year have either flopped or performed far below expectation at the box office.

Instead, South Indian regional language movies dubbed in Hindi featuring local stars are increasingly taking a substantial share of the Hindi box office sweepstakes.
 

Till now, this year, just two South Indian movies, dubbed in Hindi, have together earned Rs 683 crore in the Hindi domestic box office. One is RRR, with Telugu stars