South movies have always done well within their budgets. It was in the late 70s and 80s that they had remade all Bollywood flicks, then they reinvented themselves.
Telugu movies have always dealt with great technology and mythological movies in fact in the 60s itself. They also pay the writers extremely well and a great churner of entertainment be it comedy or family or massy fights, of course some very ott ones too.
Malayalam thrives in high concept films and continue to do so till now.
Tamil is a mix of high concept and mass movies especially with great music
Kannada movie industry was quite niche most were remakes while some very good content movies, but it was too dominated by Rajkumar that talent was suppressed, it is only in the last few years that there has been a revival.
In Bollywood after Amitabh Coolie there was a very dearth of talent till MPK in between too much of Jeetendra and Mithun etc but did not last long and more were cringe
Then came SRK with NRI, Aamir with different concept, Salman with family and the Barjatya saga and Akshay, Ajay and Sunil with action and mass so audience had a variety.
Then Bollywood started to ape the west too much and became more of glamour and style than movies and it was okay in the beginning but with rise of ott and internet when you have direct access to those why would you watch an imitation.
Now south has not lost its roots and are telling Indian rooted stories which are connecting with the pan India folk
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