India, June 15 -- The familiar sound of the clapperboard is falling silent in Naigaon east as studios that nurtured some of the Marathi entertainment industry's most popular serials and films shut down.

Driven out by the traffic nightmare on National Highway-48 (NH-48), which links the Vasai-Virar belt to Mumbai and the larger metropolitan region, around 30 studios have packed up here in the last decade. Just nine remain, apart from some smaller ones, on Naigaon's Kharbao-Bapane-Kaman stretch, a region that transformed from a rural backwater into a thriving filming ecosystem for the Hindi and Marathi industries.

But as the lights go out in Naigaon, Thane is emerging as a new address for the Marathi entertainment industry. Where there we...