Actor Nagarjuna Akkineni attended Day Two of the first World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES) 2025 in Mumbai, where he spoke about the phenomenal rise of pan-Indian films, revealing that the northern audience wanted to see heroes like Pushpa Raj, K.G.F's Rocky, or Baahubali. As a result, films like Pushpa ended up earning more in non-Telugu languages. However, for the Telugu audience, this wasn't something new—they had already experienced such grand storytelling and heroic characters in their cinema.
The 65-year-old actor added, "For Indian people, for Indian culture, I feel just living day-to-day itself is very different, for most people, 90% of the people or 95% of the people, to get out, get out of the stress, what they go through, and they want to see magic happening on screen, and that is what these larger than life films are doing, but without losing the basic Indian stories, they are not going away from that, and that is where I believe the success of all these films that happened recently is coming from India."
He shared that it might seem strange to people if, in films, a single man raises his fist and 20 people fall — it may look unrealistic. But when the same thing happens in Marvel films, with characters like Superman, it's accepted because they're given a logical explanation, like having special powers. "For us, we don't need that, we don't need those powers," added Nagarjuna.
Nagarjuna added "The common man, the general viewing public, not just that, I also like to watch my hero very very deeply, when I see Prabhas or Allu Arjun or anybody going on screen and doing this, I clap and listen, and that's where I'm basically an Indian, that's where it comes from."
"As long as we're rooted to the stories, and I'll take, I'll give an example of SS Rajamouli. He shot Bahubali frame to frame, thinking it's a Telugu film. He was very proud of where he came from, about his language, about everything, and he shot it as a Telugu film, and people lapped it up everywhere, not just here, even in Japan and China, everywhere they lapped it up. Like, as long as we are proud of our own culture, our own language and our own thoughts, we are through, and that's what makes a Pan world," concluded the actor.
WAVES 2025, the biggest entertainment event of the year, kicked off on Thursday in Mumbai. This is the inaugural World Audio Visual & Entertainment Summit hosted by the Government of India.
