They did seventeen takes. By the tenth, Vinay felt the FLV instinct draining out of him. By the fifteenth, he felt like a puppet. On the seventeenth, Arjun smiled.

With the advent of the internet and file-sharing formats like FLV (Flash Video) in the early 2000s, clips from these films found a new global audience. The specific aesthetic of South Indian cinema—distinct from the polished look of North Indian Bollywood—became a niche category on adult sites. The terms "Mallu" (a colloquial term for Malayali) and "Masala" became search keywords used to categorize this specific type of content.

The South Indian film scene is poised for further growth, with: