Why south India’s biggest stars are struggling in Bollywood

The disastrous performance of War 2, featuring Jr NTR as the antagonist after his breakout in RRR, follows the underwhelming run of Prabhas’ Adipurush and Prithviraj Sukumaran’s Bade Miyan Chote Miyan.

Trade experts say that even though north Indian viewers lap up dubbed south films, Bollywood filmmakers are unable to tap into the fan base of the southern stars they onboard for Hindi productions. Also, they barely have anything new to offer their home audiences or Hindi viewers, who already have easy access to their work via OTT and satellite channels.

In the September 2025 quarter, India’s largest multiplex chain PVR-Inox reported a 21% jump in gross box office collection from Hindi films to ₹542 crore. The company said that “…strong content [took] precedence over [the] presence of superstars.” However, regional language films didn’t do as well, with only a 3% jump in box office collections to ₹308 crore.

Dubbed wins, original flops

Compared to the ₹274.31 crore that RRR earned in the Hindi-speaking belt, Jr NTR’s War 2 finished at just over ₹185 crore against a ₹400 crore budget.

While the Hindi market acts as a value addition for southern films, Bollywood productions depend heavily on it for profitability. Older icons such as Chiranjeevi, Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan too found limited success in Hindi cinema, but the recent wave of southern stars in Bollywood was driven by the huge reach of their dubbed films, which makes the failure of their Bollywood offerings more concerning.

“Around 10 to 12 years ago, audiences in the Hindi belt weren’t as familiar with south Indian faces. Today, there is nothing as exciting about bringing a southern hero into a Bollywood project. They hardly make a mark with up-market northern audiences and you don’t satisfy their local fans anyway,” independent trade analyst Sreedhar Pillai said.

Bollywood’s risky south bet

Entertainment industry experts emphasize that Bollywood studios try to pitch northern and southern faces against each other in order to encash on their respective fan following. But it doesn’t really pay off since loyal fans of neither want to see them play characters with grey shades or those that seemingly lose the battle at the end.

Also, Hindi filmmakers are yet to master the kind of commercial filmmaking techniques that resonate with south Indian movie fans, making the Hindi outings of these actors feel bland and forced. Top Telugu stars such as Mahesh Babu and Allu Arjun have consciously refrained from working in Bollywood productions.

Rahul Puri, managing director of Mukta Arts and Mukta A2 Cinemas, said that like any actor, southern stars need the right scripts to shine in Bollywood—something missing so far.

“They don’t seem to have gotten the right vehicles. If a big south star appears in a Bollywood film, the audience is smart enough to know if it’s just a gimmick or done with logic. The film requires a little more integrity if it has to justify the presence of an actor with a particular stature,” said Puri.

Trade experts agree that cross-collaborations are healthy and vital to grow India’s overall box office. However, these need to be more than ideas that are good on paper. The films need to appeal both to their home turf and go beyond—a balance that can often be tough to achieve especially when it comes to regional markets like Tamil and Telugu where audience tastes are fairly distinct and not always similar to what Hindi viewers usually like.

“If the film is entirely attuned to the sensibilities of their home market, it would dilute the pan-India essence,” said Bihar-based independent exhibitor Vishek Chauhan.