Over the last several years, we have seen movies made inside studios, in outdoor locations, VFX, unique sound design, editing and giving thrilling experiences to the audience on the big screen. What is unchanged even in the year 2022 and will continue to remain the fact even in the future is that strong content is the key to film success. Right from the beginning days of filming, for the audience of bygone days, cinema remained the only form of entertainment and social experience to watch with families. Later many stars and superstars emerged on the big screen and were huge crowd pullers to the theatres. As times have changed, new audiences and a new generation of the cinema viewing experience are changing continuously with new formats, digital platforms, and streaming platforms.

Thanks to the pandemic in 2020. The world cinema had never experienced such a big blow, especially in India when theatres were forced to shut for a brief period, film shootings were halted, and lockdowns forced the audiences sitting at home to tune in to the rising and emerging global streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney + Hotstar, Zee 5, SonyLiv, Aha, Voot, HoiChoi among others. This has given ample time for the filmmakers as well as the audience who stayed home to explore new stories new experiences in the form of global content such as Korean dramas, blockbuster series on OTT, independent films, and docuseries, short films, and feature films across the languages.

Till the early 2010s in India, the Indian film industry was dominated by the Khans and Bollywood. They were crowd pullers across the world and remained globally recognized icons representing India on different stages and events. But in the year 2015, a Telugu film Baahubali: The Beginning, directed by SS Rajamouli released which collected around Rs.600 crores worldwide. Baahubali changed the face of Indian cinema and the global markets have recognized film markets beyond Bollywood for the first time. This opened doors to new markets unheard of for Telugu cinema and gave rise to the booming South Indian film industry dominating the entire Indian film industry there with continuous blockbusters and high success rates even after post-pandemic releases. Films like Baahubali: The Conclusion, KGF 1 and 2, Pushpa, RRR, Vikram, Sita Ramam, Bhimbisara, Karthikeya 2 are among the big-ticket successful films iterating the power of content and good cinema to bring audiences back to theatres even in the times of OTT domination.

Today, the movie-making has changed in ways that is unknown to the film-making fraternity of the earlier era. Once the market has expanded, many film-makers are emboldened to place bigger bets and scale up their movies into mega projects and even into bankable franchisees. After the stupendous success of “Vikram” movie which had pan-South Indian actors, the makers of “Pushpa-2” have roped in Vijay Sethupathy in addition the current star ensemble in order to enhance the overall reach and appeal of the franchisee- which has already seen dizzy popularity in 2021 and 2022. Today, movie-making is all about defining the market and pulling out all stops to penetrate it.

Whether it is a web series like “Family Man” or just an OTT release like “Aakasam Nee Haddu Raa” or “Rocketry”, you think of the big picture – how many eyeballs can it reach and what it takes to deliver a blockbuster. The dynamics is all about getting extra bang for the buck – and recent success of many films from South have made the creative team more ambitious to think big. How else will you explain the efforts by makers of “Liger”!

“Liger” started off as a smaller project with Puri Jagannadh-Vijay Deverekonda about Mixed Martial Arts. But once it caught the eye of Karan Johar, the stage got bigger as a Pan-Indian movie. And that’s why the creative team leaved no stone unturned in reaching out to the boxing legend Mike Tyson after liaising with his team for an year to cast him in a cameo for the film. Today’s makers dream big, and believe in calibrated risk-taking. The dynamics of movie-making has changed for the better. You can define your market and zero in on that with absolute precision.