As an industry insider who has seen cinema evolve through the decades despite the challenges posed by the pandemic and OTT platforms, Pandit thinks, this is a creatively fecund time for content makers regardless of the language they work in.

He says, “Hindi cinema and regional industries have always exchanged talent and stories but this is the first time when dubbed films have cracked the pan-Indian success code. The uproarious response to dubbed offerings like ‘RRR’, ‘Pushpa’, and the ‘KGF’ franchise not just in India but globally has made the industry more diverse, and more ambitious. Content is becoming increasingly varied because linguistic and regional boundaries no longer matter.”

He attributes this change to OTT platforms that have exposed audiences to content not just in multiple Indian languages but in French, Spanish, Korean, Italian, and counting. He says, “If Korean shows can gain worldwide fame, there is no reason why a Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Gujarati, or Punjabi film cannot get there. Though Hindi films have always been popular abroad right from Raj Kapoor’s time and have always had a captive audience at home, now more and more regional films are getting the visibility, the love and the numbers they always deserved.”

Pandit also insists that the tendency to extol one industry and bash another is pointless and says, “Some of the biggest producers and stars on both sides of the so-called regional divide are collaborating and co-creating good cinema, and wasn’t that the goal always? To come together as one, create a truly diverse Indian film industry, and become a global powerhouse to be reckoned with? We are on our way to bigger and better collaborations and we should be celebrating this synergy rather than finding binaries where none exist.”