Cinema of India: History and Key Facts

The cinema of India, consisting of motion pictures made by the Indian film industry, has had a large effect on world cinema since the second half of the 20th century. India does not have a single national film industry for any particular language; instead, Indian cinema is made up of various film industries, each focused on producing films in a specific language, such as Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bhojpuri, Assamese, Odia and others.

Major centres of film production across the country include Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Kochi, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar-Cuttack, and Guwahati. For a number of years, the Indian film industry has ranked first in the world in terms of annual film output. In 2024, Indian cinema earned ₹11, 833 crore ($1.36 billion) at the Indian box-office. Ramoji Film City located in Hyderabad is certified by the Guinness World Records as the largest film studio complex in the world measuring over 1,666 acres (674 ha).

Indian cinema is composed of multilingual and multi-ethnic film art. The term 'Bollywood', often mistakenly used to refer to Indian cinema as a whole, specifically denotes the Hindi-language film industry. Indian cinema, however, is an umbrella term encompassing multiple film industries, each producing films in its respective language and showcasing unique cultural and stylistic elements.

In 2021, Telugu cinema emerged as the largest film industry in India in terms of box office. In 2022, Hindi cinema represented 33% of box office revenue, followed by Telugu representing 20%, Tamil representing 16%, Kannada representing 8%, Malayalam representing 6%, and Marathi representing 3%, with Punjabi, Bengali and Gujarati film industries representing 1% each based on revenue. As of 2022, the combined revenue of South Indian film industries has surpassed that of the Mumbai-based Hindi-language film industry (Bollywood). As of 2022, Telugu cinema leads Indian cinema with 23.3 crore (233 million) tickets sold, followed by Tamil cinema with 20.5 crore (205 million) and Hindi cinema with 18.9 crore (189 million).

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