Even makers of Tamil and Hindi films are awestruck over the film’s mindboggling collections at the box-office
The unprecedented success of Baahubali has made the T-Town superstars jittery and few of them are surely spending sleepless nights as it may take a long time to equal, leave alone surpassing record set by Rajamouli. “It’s a scintillating success story like Maha Pushkaralu which are celebrated once in 12 years in each of the major rivers in India.
Not only T-town stars, even stars of Tamil and Hindi films should be feeling worried. No doubt, Rajamouli has proved that Telugu cinema can attract the film buffs world over and even those not very much interested in films. Nobody would have even dreamt of a Telugu film (with all its thematic and budgetary constraints) garner more than Rs 250 crore and still counting and set a new benchmark in box office history in India.
“In a way, the Telugu cinema can be divided into two parts before Baahubali and post Baahubali,” said Prasanna Kumar, general secretary of the Telugu Film Producers Council. Usually in T-town, blockbusters were usually associated with star scions. They try to break each other record by releasing in a large number of theatres to outdo each other. But now it is a whole new ball game.
The records set by Pawan Kalyan ( Rs 70 crore Atharintiki...) , Mahesh Babu (Rs 62 crore- Dhookudu), Ram Charan Tej ( Rs 65 crore Maghadeera), jr NTR (Rs 50 crore Badshah), Allu Arjun (Rs 52 crore Racegurram) are dwarfed in comparison with Rajamouli’s socio-fantasy which raked in Rs 140 crore in Telugu version alone. Even 40 per cent success at the box office by any film in future in comparison with, Baahubali would be considered a great feat, said a distributor.
Besides record-breaking collections, another distinctive feature of Baahubali was that money spent on publicity was meagre. “They should have spent just a few lakh rupees on conventional and paid publicity in both print and electronic media. However, star families spend between Rs 3 and Rs 4 crore for publicity. Baahubali team fully succeeded in disseminating the message through social media and other avenues,” said Prasanna.
Director Chandra Siddharth, however, did not agree with those that the Telugu cinema would henceforth be compared with Baahubali as far as box office success was concerned. “Though the film is a milestone and has attracted audience world over, it should be remembered that such genre of films cannot be produced in succession. So, it can’t change the face of the Telugu cinema,” he pointed out.
