Films made by relatively small filmmakers are often released with much difficulty, but it comes as a surprise when a Nagarjuna-starrer like Officer faces those very same problems. The action-drama directed by Ram Gopal Varma is struggling for distributors.
RGV and Nagarjuna have united after many years to do their fourth film together, but there’s no buzz about the film — promotions are yet to start.
RGV’s involvement in recent controversies where he targeted Pawan Kalyan seems to have made him a pariah, even though he refuses to believe so. Why else would nobody come forward to distribute his films — he’s a well known name, may have had many recent flops, but so have others. And distributors still take up films.
D. Sivaprasad Reddy, a close friend of Nagarjuna, has come to his rescue and bought the distribution rights for Krishna district. The rights for the Ceded area have been bought by N.V. Prasad, and those for the Andhra area have been bought by Subramanyam. Because of the absence of takers in the Nizam area, the makers of the film have decided to release it on their own.
“Generally, films are released by their own makers in the Nizam area, unless they are Mahesh Babu or Allu Arjun films, for which buyers are willing to pay high rates,” explains Sudheer Chandra, the co-producer of Officer. But Nagarjuna is no small actor!
When contacted, a top distributor from the Nizam area refused to comment on the film, and another agreed to speak to us on condition of anonymity. “Except Nagarjuna, there are no Telugu actors in the film. RGV is a very intelligent filmmaker, but it is a risky film for distributors. Sometimes he even makes films with a hand-held camera. If we put in Rs 2 crore, there’s no guarantee that we will be able to recover even half that amount. That’s why we haven’t bought the rights to RGV’s film,” he says.
So poor is the film’s pre-release business that its release has been postponed from May 25 to June 1. But Sudheer Chandra explains, “There are three to four films releasing this week, so we wanted to postpone the release of our film to next week.” RGV usually doesn’t make big-budget films with long-drawn shooting schedules, and Nagarjuna is the only well-known actor in this one. That means even if the movie does moderately well, he should be able to recover his costs.
But for Nagarjuna, it surely is a rude snub!
Is Pawan spat the reason?
Pawan Kalyan may not openly attack anyone like his fans do, but he can’t digest criticism. And he does have clout in the industry. So sources say RGV’s sorry plight today is because of his recent sarcastic comments on Pawan Kalyan. But nobody can point a finger and blame him, as it’s very covert.
RGV’s earlier films, that were small budget and failures at the BO, did get distributors. If nobody is coming forward this time, there surely is an ulterior plan.
