Kamal Haasan is truly a pan-Indian star for more than a decade

The popularity of Baahubali: The Beginning is credited with popularising the term “pan-India” in Indian film. People referred to the Telugu movie as a pan-India…

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The popularity of Baahubali: The Beginning is credited with popularising the term “pan-India” in Indian film. People referred to the Telugu movie as a pan-India hit due to its huge success in the Hindi-speaking region and throughout most of India. Since then, there have been numerous discussions and hypotheses over who the first pan-Indian star or hit was in India. Without respect to the race for the top spot, Kamal Haasan is no doubt the biggest pan-Indian celebrity India has ever witnessed. An in-depth look at how Kamal overcame language obstacles long before anyone else dared, paving the way for others to follow, in honor of his birthday.

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Even while his early films weren’t specifically referred to as pan-Indian, they were in many respects. In terms of box office receipts, movies like Guru and Ullasa Paravaigal (both 1980) truly broke down the linguistic barrier. However, Kamal spent the 1980s acting in other people’s movies. He primarily made Tamil-Telugu-language bilingual movies, with dubbed versions in Hindi and Malayalam. Only in the 1990s, as he began to advertise his movies correctly, did his movies truly start to appeal to all of India. Avvai Shanmughi was recreated as Chachi 420 in the beginning, but it quickly evolved into a pan-Indian film.

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The 1996 hit film Indian served as the pilot for this project. The movie’s Hindi release title was Hindustani. It wasn’t just advertised as a Hindi movie; it also featured actresses from the north (Urmila Matondkar and Manisha Koirala), and the Hindi dub featured the voices of well-known Bollywood actors. His subsequent films, Hey Ram and Abhay, which also starred Shah Rukh Khan and Raveena Tandon, continued the tradition.

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Kamal was introducing his films to the Hindi-speaking audience when other South Indian actors like Rajinikanth, Nagarjuna, and Venkatesh were making the switch to Hindi cinema. It appealed to a different segment of India. Because of this, he enjoyed greater popularity in north India than several of his contemporaries, including perhaps only Rajini, who had greater fame in the south. He was able to recruit Bollywood heavyweights like Mallika Sherawat, Rahul Bose, and even director Shekhar Kapur for his films thanks to his pan-India appeal.

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Recently, the terms “pan-India stars” have been used to describe Allu Arjun, Yash, Ram Charan, and Jr. NTR. Given her widespread appeal, Samantha Ruth Prabhu has also been referred to as that. Kamal Haasan gained pan-Indian popularity for more than a decade.

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