This article is about the Tamil-language film industry in India. For Kollywood in Kathmandu, see Cinema of Nepal.
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Kollywood (Tamil: கோலிவுட் kōlivūṭ) is the name of the popular Tamil Film Industry based in the Kodambakkam district of Chennai, India where Tamil films were once largely produced. Currently, there are more film cities in Chennai.
Silent movies were produced in Kollywood since 1916 and the era of talkies dawned in 1931. By the end of the 1930s, the industry was booming to the extent that the State of Madras legislature passed the pioneering Entertainment Tax Act 1939 with little opposition.
Contents[hide]
1 Distribution and Popularity
2 History
3 Early Movie Studios
4 Superstars
5 Industrial trends
6 Exhibitors
7 See also
8 References
9 External links
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[edit] Distribution and Popularity
Tamil films are known to be the most popular Indian films, along with Bollywood films, due to their large distribution internationally to the numerous Tamil diasporal regions. They have one of the widest overseas distribution along with Telugu and Hindi films. They have enjoyed consistent popularity among Tamil speakers in India, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malaysia. Tamil films have recently become popular in Japan (Rajinikanth's Muthu, for example, screened for a record period), South Africa, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. Sivaji: The Boss, which had released recently has also been touted as a record-breaking film for its high-budget, large opening, and reception worldwide. It also cracked into the UK's Top 10 weekend box opening movies. Ayngaran International distributes a majority of Tamil films overseas while domestic distributers such as Aascar Films, Pyramid Saimira, and Madras Talkies handle distribution within India. The Kamal Haasan starrer Dasavathaaram was distributed by Walt Disney Pictures in Canada, making it Disney's first Indian film ever to be distributed.
Tamil films enjoy significant patronage in neighbouring Indian states like Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. In Kerala and Karnataka the films are directly released in Tamil but in Andhra Pradesh they are generally dubbed into Telugu. There is a fair amount of dispersion amongst the Indian film industries. Many successful Tamil films have been remade by the Hindi and Telugu film industries. Kollywood has also remade a fair number of Hindi-, Telugu-, Malayalam-, and other-language films. It is estimated by the Manorama Yearbook 2000 (a popular almanac) that over 5,000 Tamil films were produced in the 20th century. (For a complete list of Tamil films, see List of Tamil-Language Films.) Tamil films have also been dubbed into other languages, thus reaching a much wider audience. Examples of those dubbed into Hindi include such hits as Minsaara Kanavu, Roja and Bombay. Anniyan, directed by S. Shankar, became the first Indian film to be dubbed into French. (See Popular Tamil films.)
There has been a growing presence of English in dialogue and songs as well. It is not uncommon to see movies that feature dialogue studded with English words and phrases, or even whole sentences. Some movies are also simultaneously made in two or three languages (either using subtitles or several soundtracks). Quite often, Tamil movies feature Madras Tamil, a colloquial version of Tamil spoken in Chennai. Madras being the old name of Chennai.

[edit] History
A visiting European exhibitor first screened (date unknown) a selection of silent short films at the Victoria Public Hall in Madras. The films all featured non-fictional subjects; they were mostly photographed records of day-to-day events.
In Madras (now known as Chennai), the Electric Theatre was established for the screening of silent films. It was a favourite haunt of the British community in Madras. The theatre was shut down after a few years. This building is now part of a post office complex in Anna Salai. The Lyric Theatre was also built in the Mount Road area (now Anna Salai). This venue boasted a variety of events, including plays in English, Western classical music concerts, and ballroom dances. Silent films were also screened as an additional attraction. Samikannu Vincent, an employee of the South Indian Railways in Trichy, purchased a film projector and silent films from the Frenchman Du Pont and set up a business as film exhibitor. He erected tents for screening films. His tent cinema became popular and he travelled all over the state with his mobile unit. In later years, he produced talkies and also built a cinema in Coimbatore.
To celebrate the event of King George V's visit in 1909, a grand exhibition was organised in Madras. Its major attraction was the screening of short films accompanied by sound. A British company imported a Crone megaphone, made up of a film projector to which a gramophone with a disc containing prerecorded sound was linked, and both were run in unison, producing picture and sound simultaneously. However, there was no synched dialogue. Raghupathy Venkiah Naidu, a successful photographer, took over the equipment after the exhibition and set up a tent cinema near the Madras High Court. R. Venkiah, flush with funds, built in 1912 a permanent cinema in the Mount Road area named Gaiety. It was the first in Madras to screen films on a full-time basis. This theatre is still functioning, although under different ownership.
In tent cinemas, there were usually three classes of tickets: the floor, bench and, chair. The floor-ticket purchaser sat on sand to watch the movie, but he enjoyed certain advantages that other patrons did not. He could sit as he pleased, or he could turn over and take a short nap when the narrative was particularly dull and roll back again when the action was again to his liking—luxuries in which the upper class could never indulge.

[edit] Early Movie Studios
During the 1920s, silent Tamil-language movies were shot at makeshift locations in and around Chennai, and for technical processing, they were sent to Pune or Calcutta. Later some movies featuring MKT were shot in Pune and Calcutta. In the 1930s AVM set up its makeshift studio in the town of Karaikudi, and during the same decade, full-fledged Movie studios were built in Salem (Modern Theatres Studio) and Coimbatore (Central Studios, Neptune, and Pakshiraja). By the mid 1940s, Chennai became the hub of Studio activity with two more movie Studios built in Chennai, Vijaya Vauhini Studios and Gemini Studios. Later, AVM Studios shifted its operations to Chennai. Thus, with the undivided Madras Presidency being the Capital to most of South India, Chennai became the center for Tamil- and notable Telugu-language movies. Also, most of the pre-independence era drama and stage actors joined the movie industry from the 1940s, and Chennai became the hub for South Indian-Language Cinema.

[edit] Superstars
Initially, Kollywood was dominated by M.K. Thyagaraja Bagavadhar and P. U. Chinnappa during the 1930's and 1940's. Later, in the 1950s till late 1970s, the two highly anticipated Tamil film stars were M. G. Ramachandran and Sivaji Ganesan, and from the 1980s till now are Kamal Hassan and Rajinikanth. By the 1990s there were many stars in the industry. However, Kamal Hassan and Rajinikanth still dominated the decade and brought Kollywood to a new level. The former starred quality films under his production while the latter raised the bar in commercial and family entertainers and became the highest paid actor in the India.
During the 90s, the present generation of young superstars, Joseph Vijay and Ajith Kumar, had debuted. Today along with veterans Kamal Hassan and Rajnikanth, actors Joseph Vijay, Ajith Kumar, Vikram and Surya Sivakumar are prominent leading stars who guarantee a good box office opening and appear in most high-budget feature films.
The top actresses were Savithri, Banumathi, Padmini, Saroja Devi and K. R. Vijaya till the 1970s. Jayalalitha and Lakshmi also dominated in mid 1960s. Then, another set of actresses such as Sri Devi, Hema Malini, Raadhika Sarathkumar and Sri Priya dominated the 1970s and 1980s. The 1980s were dominated by Ambika, Radha, Revathi Menon, Nadhiya and Amala; the nineties dominated by Meena, Roja, Rambha, Nagma, Devayani, Kushboo, and Soundarya; The period between 1997 and 2002 was uniquely dominated by Simran Bagga. Early 2000s were also dominated by Jyothika Saravanan and Sneha; and now dominated by Trisha Krishnan, Asin Thottumkal, Shriya Saran, Nayantara, Priyamani, and Bhavana Balachandran.
These stars have exclusive fanclubs that often resort to passionate display of support. Distributors of films of the stars are able to arrange financing of film-in-progress from banks and exhibitors without much difficulty.
Some of these actors like Rajinikanth, are politically influential due to their loyal fan bases.

[edit] Industrial trends

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (August 2007)
Average annual film output in Tamil film industry has risen steadily in the 20th century
1930s—22.5 releases per year on average
1940s—22.1 releases per year on average
1950s—32.6 releases per year on average
1960s—43.0 releases per year on average
1970s—62.5 releases per year on average
1980s—104.6 releases per year on average
1990s—101.2 releases per year on average
In the year 2007 a record 105 movies were released.[1] For the purpose of entertainment taxes, returns have to be filed by the exhibitors weekly (usually each Tuesday). [1] The Tamil film industry accounts for approx. 1% of the gross domestic product of the state of Tamil Nadu. Costs of production have grown exponentially from just under Rs.40 lakhs in 1980 to over Rs.11 crores by 2005 for a typical star-studded big-budget film. Similarly, costs of processing per print have risen from just under Rs.2,500 in 1980 to nearly Rs.70,000 by 2005. Interestingly, The Tamil Nadu government has made provisions for an entertainment tax exemption for Tamil movies having pure Tamil word(s) in the title. This is in accordance with Government Order 72 passed on 22 July 2006. The first film to be released after the new Order was Unakkum Enakkum. The original title had been Something Something Unakkum Ennakkum, a half-English and a half-Tamil title.

[edit] Exhibitors
There are about 1800 cinema-halls located in Tamil Nadu[2],with nearly 80 of them located in Chennai.[3]. Below is a list of the most prominent exhibitors in the box office.
Sathyamcomplex of many theatre screens - total of 2,380 seats (Chennai)
Albert - 1,225 seats (Chennai)
Devi - 1,212 seats (Chennai)
Melody - 998 seats (Chennai)
Abirami - 927 seats (Chennai)
Kasi - 917 seats (Chennai)
Sangam - 877 seats (Chennai)
Maharani - 733 seats (Chennai)
Udhayam - 700 seats (Chennai)
Santham - 567 seats (Chennai)
Padmam - 540 seats (Chennai)
Suriyan - 480 seats (Chennai)
Devi Bala - 369 seats (Chennai)
Subham - 306 seats (Chennai)
Mayajaal - 3000+ seats (Chennai)
Inox - 909 seats (Chennai)
Show rentals range from Rs.700 in C-centres to as much as Rs.7,000 in A-centres for an average 700-seat screen. Unlike Hollywood, superstardom is deeply ingrained into Kollywood economics, so distributors are prepared to not only finance the films of super stars with proven track records but are also, in turn, able to secure minimum guarantees for those films from exhibitors. Rise of multiplexes in the late 1990s has stunted the growth of large screens.