Shah Rukh Khan’s Jawan directed by Tamil director Atlee is still going strong, shattering box office records. Since the film’s release on September 7, Jawan has grossed Rs 625 crore in India and around Rs 1120 crore globally. Director Atlee has delivered a huge commercial success, not just for King Khan but also for the Hindi film industry itself, proving – once again – that cinema is all about content. If Telugu director SS Rajamouli proved that regional cinema can go global, Kollywood director Atlee has shown that a commercial film director can be successful in any language. So, with Jawan’s success, are South directors set to go big in the Hindi film industry?
Some may say that South film directors have always done well in Bollywood seeing that filmmakers, like K Viswanath, K Raghavendra Rao, Ram Gopal Varma, Priyadarshan, Mani Ratnam, Shankar, A R Murugadoss, and Prabhu Deva, have directed successful Hindi films. But it is only now with the box office records being broken (think Baahubali, RRR, KGF, Kantara, Jawan) that the Indian audience and film industry is taking more cognizance of the abundance of talented filmmakers south of the Vindhyas. While the Indian film industry and exhibitors were worried about how the COVID-19 pandemic had impacted the world of entertainment, south filmmakers delivered success after success bringing the audience back to the theatres in droves. Today, there is as big a buzz for Kannada filmmaker Prashanth Neel’s Telugu film Salaar (Hombale Films production) as there is for Salman Khan’s Tiger 3 (YRF production) directed by Maneesh Sharma.
While earlier, directors from other industries got signed on mostly when their films were being remade in Hindi, the norm has clearly shifted now. Filmmakers who have delivered blockbusters in the south are fervently being wooed for big projects in Bollywood. If you look at Atlee and Sandeep Reddy Vanga for instance – Atlee delivered three big commercial hits with Vijay, while Sandeep Reddy Vanga delivered a blockbuster with Arjun Reddy and its Hindi remake, Kabir Singh. Shah Rukh Khan who was looking to come back to commercial cinema with a bang signed on Atlee and there was no disappointment – Jawan had action, masala, sentiment, romance, comedy, song and dance – everything that King Khan’s fans wanted. Meanwhile, Sandeep Reddy Vanga may have been called out for his toxic and sexist film Arjun Reddy but he is just finishing Animal (set in the underworld) with Ranbir Kapoor and has Spirit with Prabhas lined up next.
Interestingly though, it’s not just well-known directors who are being roped in by the Hindi film industry at this point. On October 12, news was that Kannada filmmaker Sachin B Ravi, who directed Avane Srimannarayana, had been signed on as director for Shahid Kapoor’s next, a period film based on the Mahabharata to be produced by the Bhagnanis. Kollywood director Vishnu Vardan delivered two big hits with Ajith (Arrambam and Billa) but in the last decade has had only two directorials. He shifted his focus to Hindi and debuted in 2021 with Siddharth Malhotra’s Shershaah which turned out to be a hit. The filmmaker is now working on his next Hindi project for Karan Johar.
However, there are some hit filmmakers who strongly believe that their stories are best told in their regional language (and then released in Hindi and other languages). Directors, like Rajamouli, Sukumar and Trivikram Srinivas, have been offered Hindi films but they believe that their Telugu films released in other languages are working wonders and they’d prefer to stick to that as of now. Younger directors, like Prashanth Neel and Nag Ashwin, will be looking to expand their cinematic universe given their vision and are likely to land up in Bollywood at some point in their career.
All this begs the question – is there a seismic shift in the Hindi film industry? In some ways. The fact that post the pandemic, numerous big Hindi films have failed at the box office, shows Bollywood needs to rethink its content strategy. The need for fresh stories and new content is what the Indian audience is looking for and this has been amply proved by the success of south Indian cinema in the Hindi-speaking market. Given that south Indian cinema has always had strong content, many Hindi film producers seem to be willing to bet more on south directors. When filmmakers in Mumbai were worried about saying yes even to small projects due to Covid, Shah Rukh greenlit Jawan at a budget of more than Rs 300 crore confidently. With Jawan’s mega-success, Shah Rukh Khan recently said of having worked with Atlee and south cinema, “I have always been a fan of the cinema of South even when I don’t understand the language at times.