How RRR’s success brought a wave of Telugu-language movies to Netflix

Since its release in March 2022, the Telugu-language film RRR has become one of the most celebrated Indian films in recent memory. The action epic garnered international acclaim and even won an Academy Award in 2023 — the first Indian production ever to win an Oscar. It has also had a surprising secondary effect: It sparked a boom in Telugu films available to Netflix customers in the U.S.

Telugu is spoken by 95 million people, mainly in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in southern India. There are just 1.2 million Telugu speakers in the U.S., but according to data from streaming tracker ReelGood, it is now the ninth most popular language in Netflix’s U.S. catalog. American subscribers can watch more films created in Telugu than those shot in German, Russian, or any dialect of Chinese.

When RRR was released in 2022, Netflix hosted just 35 Telugu-language titles on the service for American viewers. In the two years since, that number has tripled to 105 titles, ranging from both entries of the epic Baahubali series to the romantic drama 18 Pages. 

Oddly enough, even though RRR was filmed in Telugu, the Telugu-language track isn’t actually available on Netflix. The streaming giant only secured the rights to stream the film dubbed in Hindi, English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Turkish. Indian streaming service Zee5 purchased exclusive rights to the original Telugu version, as well as dubs in Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada.

After years of international expansion, Netflix’s U.S. catalog is now evenly split between English and non-English content. As of February 2024, just under half the titles available in the U.S. — 3,307 out of 6,639 — were originally recorded in English. 

There has also been a corresponding rebalancing of the company’s spend on content. Non-English content is set to account for more than half of Netflix’s spending for the first time this quarter, according to a recent report from Ampere Analysis.

The rise in Telugu content has accompanied a smaller jump in other south Indian languages. Content in Malayalam (spoken in India’s southwestern state of Kerala) nearly doubled, climbing from 23 titles to 45 between 2022 and 2024. Tamil content grew from 75 titles to 86 over the same period. Oddly, Hindi — one of India’s official languages — has actually seen a decline in titles available in the U.S. Netflix library.

Other Asian countries are also seeing a boom in the availability of titles in their native tongues. There was a similar jump in content from South Korea, which rose from 191 titles to 294. It comes amid the growing global popularity of Korean cultural exports like K-pop, but it also coincides with the breakout success of Netflix’s original series, Squid Game.

In part, the shifts may have resulted from the structure of modern content licensing deals. As Netflix pushes for greater market share in countries like India, it usually seeks out region-specific content to appeal to local users. And when Netflix acquires a title, it’s often relatively cheap to purchase the right to stream it globally, too.

“Content owners know very well that there’s no incremental benefit for them to not give Netflix the licensing rights to distribute outside of their markets,” Laurent Yoon, an analyst who covers Netflix for the investment firm AllianceBernstein, told Rest of World. “Oftentimes they don’t have the resources to distribute in the U.S. anyway … If there’s no downside for Netflix, why not?”

At the same time, there’s a growing U.S. audience for international content — an audience that seems to be seeking out Netflix over other services. In 2022, the research firm Parrot Analytics found that foreign-language shows made up more than 10% of the demand for Netflix originals, nearly double the same figure for Amazon’s Prime Video.

There is also a growing portion of U.S. viewers who use subtitles for all content regardless of language, which may make foreign-language content less daunting. A recent study found that half of American viewers watch most videos with subtitles — a number that rose to 70% when restricted to subjects younger than 26 years.

But above all, it’s a sign of how doggedly Netflix has pursued content that can be marketed to global audiences. In a recent earnings call, co-CEO Ted Sarandos hinted at that strategy while talking about the platform’s live-action remake of the Japanese anime One Piece. “This show is number one in 84 countries around the world,” Sarandos told analysts, “which is something that Stranger Things didn’t do, that Wednesday didn’t do.”