Cinema of South India, refers to the cinema of the four major film industries in South India; primarily engaged in making feature films in the four major languages of the region, namely — Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam. Based out of the cities of Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, and Kochi, they are often colloquially referred to as Tollywood, Kollywood, Sandalwood, and Mollywood. Although the four industries developed independently for a long period of time, gross exchange of artists and technicians, as well as globalisation helped to shape this new identity in Indian Cinema. By 2010, South India became the home for 6320, or about 62% of the 10,167 Cinema theatres in India. For the financial year of 2013, the combined net box office revenue of Telugu and Tamil film industries stood at 36% of the total net revenue of Indian cinema. In 2021, the combined domestic box-office of the four South Indian film industries totalled ₹2,400 crore, surpassing that of Hindi film markets, where box office collection stood at ₹800 crore. In 2021, Telugu film industry emerged as the largest film industry of India in terms of box office revenue.
