Seeing that malayalam movie Drishyam and Manichitrathazhu was remade across the various Industries why did Malayalam often stick to original storylines and scripts ?
Ive only come to realize in my early adult years, that some of my favorite childhood hindi movies like Herapheri and Hulchul were remakes of Malayalam and only started watching non hindi movies recently.
I feel if it weren't for covid and Ott boom every other industry across India would have happily just kept remaking Malayalam movies. Im not saying Malayalam hasn't done it either but just googling it shows Malayalam has done the fewest remakes and has mostly stuck to originals and unique scripts. Asking my mallu friend on why that is , he mentioned they've watched movies across industries like Hindi Tamil, Kannada and Telugu since the 70's and also movies outside India like Hollywood and South Korean more than folks from other parts and could sense copies and remakes and would troll the mallu directors and producers if they did blatant copies.
He said that he was born in middle east since his parents migrated from Kerala during the 70's and there were tons of video stores and his parents would just rent lots of movies from various languages and they would watch most of them even if they didnt have subtitles back then and this made an impact on him and he's been doing the same way before ott. He would rent movies from many languages since they were cheap and watch them.
What's you guys take on this ? Did the majority of folks from other states just not watch movies outside their own language and therefore unaware what other states were doing ?