Tollywood Fans like it, but Bollywood hates it!

Happening Telugu producer Naga Vamshi sparked a controversy with his Bollywood vs South debate during a recent roundtable discussion in which Hindi producer Boney Kapoor was also one of the participants. The opinions exchanged by Vamshi and Kapoor went viral on social media platforms and received mixed reactions from supporters of Tollywood and Bollywood.

While some of the high-profile personalities like Siddharth, Sanjay Gupta, Hansal Mehta tried to counter his comments in support of Bollywood, Telugu fans on social media perceives Naga Vamshi as a hero for spitting the facts on face without an iota of hesitation and fear.

During the discussion, Naga Vamsi explained that South cinema changed the way Bollywood looks at their cinema. He also voiced his opinion that Bollywood was stuck at Bandra and Juhu all these years and witnessed a change only with Baahubali, RRR, Animal and Jawan, which were directed by South directors.

Boney Kapoor disagreed with his claims. He said “we can’t be talking about every bit of knowledge we know. We need to talk in broader terms. When I mention Mughal-E-Azam, Baahubali and all that, it’s not that I’ve missed out on other films. I know those films. At the tip of my fingers, I can rattle out those names. But, it’s not like Telugu cinema has taught us. I don’t believe that.”

After the clip went viral, Bollywood pointed out that Naga Vamsi was disrespecting a senior producer like Boney Kapoor. Some of them called him arrogant and also criticised his attitude and way of talking with Boney Kapoor during the discussion.

Naga Vamsi immediately clarified via his X platform by posting, “You don’t need to teach us how to respect elders, we respect boney ji more than u guys do and there was no disrespect towards boney ji in that conversation it was a healthy discussion, me and boney i had a nice laugh and hugged each other after the interview… So please dont come to your conclusions with just what you saw”.

Keeping aside the opinions expressed by both Naga Vamshi and Boney Kapoor, general public feel that the standards of Indian cinema reached to new heights in the last decade only because of the larger-than-life and content oriented films from South India, particularly Tollywood.

Numbers speak that Telugu films have dominated the box office in the last few years when the majority of Bollywood movies have been struggling to rake in even average revenues. Even some of biggest Hindi blockbusters in recent times were helmed by directors from Telugu and Tamil. Going by these facts and figures, what Naga Vamshi expressed seem to be not incorrect, but Bollywood folks are unable to swallow the hard pill.