THE SOUTH SWAG

KGF: Chapter 2

[April 2022]

Kannada actor YASH and writer-director PRASHANT NEEL etched their names in the pantheon of Indian cinema with the second-highest grossing film of all time. And they aren’t even done with the franchise

Nationwide ₹992 crore

Hindi dubbed ₹427 crore

SOURCE: Ormax Media & boxofficeindia.com

Over the past seven months, two smugglers from South India have caught the imagination of audiences across the country. Their illegal enterprise is different—red sandalwood for Pushpa, gold for Rocky—but the pluck is common: mama’s boys who lapse into effortless swag when taking on the police, politicians or criminals and their minions. From Pushpa strutting around with a tic in the shoulder and a hand stroking his beard to Rocky donning dapper suits and savouring his cigarette and drink, the films have made household names out of its two leading men: Telugu cinema’s ‘Icon Star’ Allu Arjun and Kannada cinema’s ‘Rocking Star’ Yash. The more badass their heroes, the better their reception in cinemas. Pushpa: The Rise was the highest-grossing film of 2021, its dubbed version in Hindi earning Rs 108 crore out of the total of Rs 323 crore across the country. Then, in 2022, KGF: Chapter 2 became the second-biggest film of Indian cinema, grossing a mammoth Rs 992 crore nationwide, nearly half of it—Rs 427—from its Hindi version. The southern tsunami at the box office did not stop with Pushpa and KGF, S.S. Rajamouli’s RRR—Rise Roar Revolt was an equal blockbuster, the terpsichorean skills and gravity-defying stunts of its two freedom-fighter heroes against the British colonial masters delighting audiences in India and abroad alike.

RRR

[March 2022]

Another ingenious, action-heavy visual treat from S.S. Rajamouli that revived the two-hero entertainer with RAM CHARAN and JR NTR as his freedom fighter superheroes. Hollywood loves it too

Nationwide ₹902 crore

Hindi dubbed ₹275 crore

Their fans include not just the moviegoer in the north but also their counterparts in the.” It didn’t come easy, the actors spent a lot of time on the projects. Allu Arjun, for instance, spent four months in 2020 learning and acing the Chittoor Telugu accent over video calls. The swagger came courtesy director Sukumar. “Sukumar said, ‘I don’t know what you do, but everybody has to walk like you’,” recalls Allu Arjun, who came up with the sloping shoulder, convinced that it would be “easily imitable”. Yash has devoted six years to the KGF franchise, his long hair and beard a constant source of annoyance for his wife when he started out in 2017.