The film company Andhra Pradesh, also referred to as Tollywood, is the Telugu-language film industry in India, with a reported turnover of $US52 million on ticket sales of 700 million, in 2005.
Despite the gloomy weather, a full film crew and two Tollywood sensations, who are known by the screen names Nandamuri "Balayya" Balakrishna and "Sheela", were joined by a 16-strong team of South Island (Dunedin and Christchurch) dancers for one of four New Zealand locations for the movie Param Veer Chakra.
A spokesperson for the production company said the full cast and crew will shoot sequences in Christchurch, Auckland, Queenstown, and Tekapo - with final production work taking place in Bangkok.
With strong ties to the Islamic faith, the new film is expected to be released on screens across India, Malaysia, Singapore and Dubai in February.
Andhra Pradesh is the largest film company in India in terms of the number of movies made each year and the company has earned Guinness World Records, including records for acting in the same role the most times by an actor, the most films directed by a female director, and the most films produced by one person.
Last year, scenes for Bollywood blockbuster I Hate Luv Stories were filmed in the Wakatipu region, and the film had the 12th-biggest opening weekend in Bollywood history, grossing about $US13 million in the opening three weeks.
At present, about 150 Telugu movies are released every year, or about three productions every week.
The language of Telugu has the third-largest number of native speakers in India - 74 million in the 2001 census - and is 15th in the Ethnologue list of most-spoken languages worldwide.
