On completing a tense scene for his next, Ghazi , being filmed in the outskirts of Hyderabad, Rana Daggubati settles down next to the film’s director Sankalp Reddy to review it on the monitor. The rest of the crew gets busy, readying the next shot — which happens to be the same scene, this time in Hindi. Based on the mysterious sinking of the Pakistani submarine PNS Ghazi during the Indo-Pak 1971 war, the Telugu thriller Ghazi is among the many regional films from down south being simultaneously shot in Hindi to capitalise on the national interest garnered by dubbed films. “Since most actors from the cast are known in Bollywood as well, we decided to make a bilingual to reach out to a wider audience,” says Reddy, who feels that familiarity of cast members is crucial to release a regional film in a different state. The ambitious multi-language films currently in production include actor Sudheer Babu’s biopic on Gopichand Pullela, Gopichand (Telugu and Hindi), Shruti Haasan and Kamal Haasan’s next Shabhash Kundu (Tamil, Telugu and Hindi) and Telugu director Krish’s untitled buddy cop film, co-written with Sridhar Raghavan, that will star a Bollywood biggie along with a South Indian superstar (Tamil and Hindi).
The genesis of bilinguals
While the recent spurt of bilinguals could be credited to national box office numbers, the trend isn’t novel. The first film in this space was the 1945 Tamil musical Meera , starring the Carnatic legend MS Subbulakshmi. “The Hindi version had a few cast changes as they couldn’t speak in Hindi but M S Subbulakshmi played the lead in both and her popularity across the country drew audiences to the theatre in every state that the film released in,” says noted film historian Theodore Baskaran. The film’s screening was preceded by a video clip where poet and politician Sarojini Naidu introduces Subbulakshmi as the nightingale of India. In recent years, one has witnessed a reverse case scenario where the popularity of a Hindi film star triggered the need to film her much-awaited comeback in Tamil and Telugu as well. The actress was none other than, Sridevi and the film, English Vinglish .
For most Hindi film audiences, the relationship with Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu films has been restricted to the staple Sunday-afternoon-dubbed-versions that air on TV. It is a habit that has fuelled an awareness of South Indian actors beyond the Rajnikanths and the Kamal Haasans. “Satellite television has played an important role in bringing stars like Junior NTR, Surya, Ram Charan Teja into living rooms across the country. These dubbed films have ensured that South Indian stars are not as unfamiliar as they were 15 years ago,” says Shibashish Sarkar, COO at Reliance Big Entertainment. Sarkar pegs the appeal of an actor to drive the commercial success of the dubbed version of his film. “In the last few years, there have been many remakes of South Indian films in Hindi. This goes to prove that their appeal translates across languages,” he notes.
But the true milestone in this space was set by SS Rajamouli’s magnum opus Baahubali: The Beginning , which clocked a worldwide box office collection of Rs.586 crores. Being ranked the highest grossing Indian language film in history, it was also an inspiring tale for the many regional filmmakers hoping to capitalise on the newfound equity of transcending linguistic boundaries. “The Indian film industry has evolved today and that’s a really good thing for actors. Now, I have the option of choosing scripts from across India, knowing that the audience has evolved enough to accept any film with good content. Baahubali was shot in Telugu and Tamil and was dubbed in Hindi. But it was accepted nationally and was not seen as a film featuring a bunch of Telugu actors,” says the film’s star, Daggubati. He is seconded by Telugu superstar Sudheer Babu, who made his Bollywood debut in Baaghi and believes that bilinguals help him reach out to a new set of viewers. “The audience doesn’t categorise it as a dubbed Telugu film but a Bollywood film which extends its reach,” says Babu, who is working on the aforementioned biopic on badminton legend Pullela Gopichand.
Driving the dub revolution
But the renewed box office worth of such films and familiar faces at the helm are not the only reasons to drive this wave. “Cinema is a universal medium where visually exciting and good content always sells. There are talented directors down south, who are experimenting with new ideas and exciting genres like horror comedies, which is presently popular in the south,” says Ajit Thakur, CEO, Trinity Pictures, a division of Eros International. Thakur’s studio has roped in Tamil director, Prabhu Solomon to direct a bilingual collaboration with actors from both Bollywood and Tollywood. “Five years ago, we would get only 20-25 screens (for a regional release) outside the state. Now, it has grown four-fold,” adds Sarkar, casually hinting at how distributors have, over time, become more receptive to dubbed films. The fact that Reliance Entertainment’s Zanjeer in 2013 (Telugu and Hindi) and Raavan in 2010 (Tamil and Hindi) released at a time when audience were still sceptical of bilinguals, explains their modest box office performance.
Biting into bilinguals
That a few films have done phenomenally well across languages doesn’t mean every film is eligible to be re-shot or even dubbed. Even the sequel of the much-celebrated Baahubali: The Beginning was initially touted by industry insiders to be shot in Hindi, along with Telugu and Tamil. But Daggubati explains why the makers opted otherwise. “We are shooting it in Telugu and Tamil and will have a dubbed Hindi version because a large portion of the sequel had already been shot before the first part became such a success.” Daggubati also feels that the genre of the film dictates whether it qualifies to be filmed in another language. “Since this (the Baahubali franchise) is a war film and is less dialogue-driven, dubbing is a simpler option. But getting the diction and the lip sync right is something we have to carefully work on.” Shruthi Haasan who is currently in Los Angeles with father Kamal, shooting the trilingual Sabaash Naidu (and Shabhash Kundu in Hindi), an action comedy believes that sometimes there is a limitation in maintaining the crispness and the overall punch when writing dialogues across three languages. “From a production point of view, I do believe it is cost effective to shoot across languages simultaneously and more importantly, the gusto and the zing from a performance point of view is maintained as opposed to dubbing it,” she adds.
For Hindi film producers, opting for a co-production is a strategic decision and they have set-up filters at the script level, to identify which one’s would work. “We understand what will work in North India, so, at the scripting level itself, we check if it can be adapted. A script goes through three levels of screening, where they are selected only if they can cater to a pan-India audience,” says Sagar Sadhwani, senior vice president – business development, Eros.
Another reason why producers are particularly careful before green lighting a bilingual or multilingual is because they want to be certain that it would align with audience sensibilities in the targeted market. “While shooting in two different languages, it is necessary to keep the cultural ambience and the nuances of both the regions in mind. The sets and props in a regional film can be, at times, very different from that of a Hindi film. A greater risk is when a film falls in between. When Zanjeer released, both Telugu and Hindi audience couldn’t relate to it as it was lost in the territory crossfire,” adds Sarkar.
The author is a freelance writer
