It has been raining films at the Telugu box office! This festive season saw the release of five Telugu films. But, only one film — Premam did well, while the remaining films failed to cash in on the Dasara holiday fever.
Interestingly, except Jaguar, where the film cost around Rs 75 crore, most of the other films were made with an average budget.
Naga Chaitanya, who plays the lead in Premam got a good break with this film, after Manam that released a couple of years ago.
Directed by Chandu Mondeti, this film is a remake of the Malayalam film with the same title. “Generally, it’s easy to remake an action or comedy film, but it’s very tough to remake a love story,” says director Chandu. He admits that he made a few changes to suit the local sensibilities, but didn’t spoil the soul of the film.
“The collections are good and the buyers are very happy,” says the director. The film has collected nearly Rs 25 crore till now and is still going strong.
The other reason for the success of Premam is Shruti Haasan. “We thought of Shruti Haasan, who is a crowd-puller, and roped her in. Though there was criticism before the release, everyone is appreciating her performance now,” says Chandu.
The Rs 75-crore budget film, Jaguar is the film in which Nikhil, grandson of former Prime Minister, HD Deve Gowda, debuts. The film was released in Telugu across nearly 300 screens. However, as Nikhil is not a known face here, the impact has been very low and the collections have not been impressive.
Tamannaah starrer Abhinetri also released during the festival season, but this film too didn’t get good reviews. Though the film is neither comedy nor horror, it got good openings because of Tamannaah. However, it couldn’t sustain itself from the second day onwards, as the content of the film was not satisfactory.
Comedian-turned-actor, Sunil’s, Edu Gold Ehe turned out to be a complete wash out. Though the makers expected decent openings for the film, it seems like there were no takers for Sunil. It’s going to be a big loss for the producers of this film as they may not recover even 20 per cent of the film’s cost.
Prakash Raj’s Mana Voori Ramayanam was appreciated by everyone, but when it came to the collections, it sang a different song. The narration of the film is slow and it didn’t attract the present generation of movie-goers.
“Generally, for an important festival like Dasara, the audience expect films with big stars, but this time, all the films have been mediocre.
“Premam did well since it managed to connect to the youth. But, all the other movies have been rejected by the audience,” says Jalapathi Gudelli, trade analyst.
