When Kantara began trending far beyond its theatrical window, through music reels, folklore discussions, dubbed versions, and repeat OTT viewing, it signalled something larger than a sleeper hit. It showed how a film deeply rooted in local culture could evolve into a scalable cultural IP, capable of travelling across platforms, languages, and time.
Soon after, similar patterns became visible across South cinema. KGF transformed its central character into a pan-India franchise engine, with music, dialogue clips, and sequel-driven anticipation sustaining momentum long after the first film left theatres. Baahubali went even further, expanding its universe into books, animation, games, and character-led storytelling.
Together, these titles made one thing clear: success was no longer defined by box office alone, but by a film’s ability to generate cultural memory, repeat engagement, and expandable story worlds. These films were built to live beyond a single release window, designed to be discovered on OTT, amplified through music and digital platforms, and sustained through fandom.
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According to Anup Chandrasekharan, COO - Regional, The EPIC Company, who has spent decades building and monetising entertainment IPs across music, cinema and digital platforms, this evolution reflects a fundamental change in how entertainment content is now being conceived and monetised. “Earlier, films were seen in isolation. Music was a support system. OTT was another window. Today, when I look at a film, I look at it as a complete ecosystem. You cannot depend only on theatrical revenues. You have to evaluate whether the content can work across theatres, OTT, social media, music, and whether it can become an expandable IP.”
He pointed out that fragmentation and content glut are the two biggest forces driving this shift. Audiences are scattered across platforms, attention is fractured, and appointment viewing has largely disappeared. “If you create content only for one window, it becomes a very risky business,” he added. The response, increasingly, is to design platform-agnostic IPs that can be cut, expanded, repackaged, and monetised across surfaces over time.
Crafting marketing campaign for KGF 2
It is within this context that a growing set of South production houses are moving from movie-making to portfolio-led IP businesses, where music, films, series, digital distribution, merchandising, live events, and creator ecosystems are planned as one integrated stack.
“Leading South film franchises today are no longer treated as transactional film licenses, they are multi-surface media properties spanning theatrical, television, music and OTT. For us, OTT becomes the long-term home where these franchises compound value—through re-watches, library discovery and sustained fan engagement,” said Rakesh CK, Head of Sun NXT, who leads growth and strategy for the South Indian OTT platform.
He added that strong franchises create a halo effect across platforms. “A successful IP doesn’t just perform in isolation. It drives repeat sampling of the back catalogue and increases discovery across the entire content library.”
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Studios Behaving Like IP Businesses
Experts have pointed out that studios are reorganising themselves as IP engines, brands are committing to longer partnerships, and films are no longer endpoints but entry points into expanding entertainment ecosystems.
This shift has also fundamentally altered how films are marketed and monetised. “Earlier, film marketing in the South was largely campaign-driven and time-bound, focussed on driving buzz close to release,” said Senthil Kumar Hariram, Founder and Managing Director of marketing agency FTA Global.
“Today, as studios build franchise-led IPs, marketing has become about long-horizon audience building, sustaining interest between installments and building cultural memory around characters, music, and story worlds. Agencies are increasingly acting as brand custodians rather than just launch amplifiers.”
Arka Media Works (Telugu) was among the earliest to institutionalise franchise thinking. Baahubali was never treated as just a two-film project. The studio retained tight control over its rights and actively expanded the universe through books, comics, animation, and games via licensing-style partnerships. The films served as the anchor, but the long-term value was designed to compound across formats and audiences.
Hombale Films (Kannada / PAN-India) represents perhaps the most visible contemporary example of an IP-first studio. With KGF, Kantara, and Salaar, the banner has focussed on repeatable tent poles rather than isolated successes. It has also demonstrated distribution-stack behaviour, self-distributing Salaar in Karnataka, structuring territory-wise deals, and running strong owned digital channels for music and content drops.
Sun Pictures (Tamil) operates as a studio brand within the larger Sun Group ecosystem, giving it inherent distribution and amplification advantages. With television, music, and digital surfaces under one umbrella, films are plugged into an already-scaled network, aligning closely with the integrated-stack logic that now defines IP-led thinking.
Lyca Productions (Tamil) has positioned itself as both producer and distributor, indicating a desire to control multiple monetisation layers.
Mythri Movie Makers (Telugu) has steadily expanded beyond pure production into production-plus-distribution, visible in how it manages major releases across territories.
Brands Are No Longer Limiting Associations
The evolution of franchises has also changed how brands engage with cinema. “Brands are not just buying impressions anymore. They are buying access to engaged communities and recurring moments of relevance. That makes partnerships deeper, more meaningful, and more strategic,” said Senthil.
Media planners echo this sentiment. According to Shrikant Shenoy, AVP, Lodestar UM, the industry has moved from “moment planning” to full-funnel, long-term journeys. “Earlier, associations were sharply focussed, teasers, contests, meet-and-greets for six to eight weeks. Now, we look at these franchises as evolving universes that can be activated across theatrical, extended assets, characters, social media, animation, games, live events, and merchandising.”
He noted that for pan-India brands such as Mahindra and Samsung, the appeal lies in continuity, execution control, and pan-India reach. These franchises are no longer limited to the South; they deliver multi-language, cross-market audiences, including the diaspora.
Adding to this, Hariram pointed out that one-off film campaigns often struggle with fragmented metrics and short-term attribution. In contrast, franchise-led IPs allow brands to track performance across multiple phases, ranging from pre-release buzz and post-release engagement to digital content consumption and repeat interactions over time.
Franchise-Led IPs & The Long Tail
The most significant outcome of this transformation is predictability, something both brands and studios value, experts told e4m. Franchise-led IPs make continuity and measurement easier. Instead of fragmented metrics tied to a single release, performance can be tracked across phases such as pre-release buzz, post-theatrical engagement, music streams, OTT consumption, search behaviour, and repeat interactions.
“They reduce uncertainty,” said Shenoy. “Clients are increasingly comfortable committing larger, longer-term budgets because these IPs allow multiple peaks over time. It’s no longer one launch weekend, it’s a journey.”
For studios, the logic is equally clear. “If you depend on a single revenue stack, you are at risk. You need revenue from theatrical, satellite, OTT, TV, music, YouTube, and character extensions. The real business is ensuring longevity,” said Chandrasekharan.
In that sense, South cinema’s current edge lies less in scale and more in mindset. By treating films as the starting point rather than the finish line, production houses are quietly redefining what it means to build entertainment businesses in an economy shaped by fragmentation, fandom, and long-tail value.