The alleged attempt by distributors’ to extract money from Puri Jagannadh for losses incurred over the film Loafer has a direct bearing on Rajinikanth.
In 2002, when Baba flopped, Rajinikanth was approached by distributors to compensate them. The superstar, ever the kind-hearted do-gooder, reimbursed the distributors.
Says a close friend of Puri Jagannadh, “In his nobility Rajini Sir did a great disservice to the entire South Indian film industry. He had no business to compensate distributors. It wasn’t his responsibility. Once he did so, distributors were encouraged to arm-twist other filmmakers to shell out money.”
Puri’s friend feels that major Telugu superstars are aggravating the crisis by paying the distributors. “Some big stars who have no financial stakes in the films that they act in still pay distributors when the films don’t do well. This is a wrong practice. And what happened with Puri is a direct result of all the pacifying that Telugu stars have been doing with distributors.”
As far as Puri compensating distributors for Loafer is concerned, Puri’s friend says, “Loafer released with Shah Rukh Khan’s Dilwale and Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Bajirao Mastani.”
“We hardly got enough theatres and screens. And there was no proper computation of the collections of our film.” This brings us to the major problem of estimating box office collections in Tollywood.
Says Puri’s friend, “Theatres in Hyderabad and the rest of Andhra Pradesh don’t use computers to assess box office collections of Telugu films. This has got to change. Also, Puri is getting producers, directors and especially actors in the Telugu film industry together to stop this practice of compensating distributors.”
