Telugu cinema and its stars are on a roll these days on account of the super success of movies like the Bahubali series and Pushpa. Major Bollywood stars are falling over each other in reaching out to Telugu moviemakers for roles in their movies. The latest to do so is Bollywood diva Deepika Padukone, who has expressed the desire to work with Allu Arjun and Jr. NTR.
In fact, she has gone to the extent of saying that she is obsessed with Jr NTR and Allu Arjun and hoped that her sharing this fact does not cause a fight amongst the Telugu superstars! There is a noticeable and palpable shift in the power balance between Bollywood and Tollywood. Gone are the days when Hindi cinema dished out by Bollywood was marquee stuff and cinema from other parts of the country was the poor cousin collectively dubbed as regional cinema.
While there is no doubting the fact that Telugu cinema is slowly but surely assuming center stage, the fact of the matter is that there have always been collaborations carried out between actors and filmmakers hailing from different regions that together made up the Indian film industry. Yesteryear actresses Waheeda Rehman and Jaya Prada are prime examples of past Telugu movie actors who made the switch to Bollywood and achieved huge success. In present times SS Rajamouli’s father KV Vijendra Prasad wrote the script of the Salman Khan blockbuster Bajrangi Bhai Jaan.
At the end of the day, it boils down to talent and availability of work. Talented and successful actors and filmmakers will be in demand in Bollywood or Tollywood, regardless of where they originally found success. It is all economics at the end of the day.
