Tollywood-The Second Largest

Telugu Cinema refers to the Telugu film industry. The industry is the second largest in India in terms of number of movies made in a year and third largest in terms of infrastructure. The state of Andhra Pradesh has the highest number of cinema halls in India. The IMAX theater in Hyderabad has a few world records to its credit. The industry has a few Guinness records for the most films directed by male and female directors, the most number of films produced by a person and also for having the largest film studio in the world.

240 Telugu movies are released every year (.Popular movies tend to open during the three festive/holiday seasons of the region: Sankranthi, Ugadi, and Dussera. Just like any other film industry, the Telugu movie industry produces all genres of movies. In 2005, the annual turnover reached Rs. 2.3 Billion ($52 Million), with Rs. 700 million coming from the ticket sales itself next only to Hindi.

Box Office Collections

The Telugu film industry accounts for 1% of the gross domestic product of Andhra Pradesh. Telugu films enjoy significant patronage in the neighboring southern States like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka.

There is a fair amount of dispersion amongst the Indian film industries. Many successful Telugu films have been remade by the Hindi and Tamil film industries. For instance, Pokiri which was a Telugu film starring Tollywood heartthrob Mahesh Babu, was remade into Tamil and now being remade in Hindi with Salman Khan as the lead actor.

The state of Andhra Pradesh has more than 2700 theaters, of which 150 are in the city of Hyderabad alone.