Club of crores

The bar has finally been set. Telugu cinema, for the first time in its history, reached the legendary Rs 100-crore club this year. Rajamouli’s Baahubali smashed through it last month and this week, Mahesh Babu’s Srimanthudu followed with spectacular collections of Rs 101.25 crore, worldwide — in its very first week. So happy is Eros — the buyer of Srimanthudu’s film rights, that they released a note confirming the development — a rather rare occurrence when you keep in mind that producers are hesitant to talk collections even after a month of the film’s release.

Publicity wagon

Better visibility has helped though. Baahubali set the tone even travelling to Cannes and a very inspired Mahesh made sure he hit the road too.

“It’s very important to pitch your film correctly, irrespective of genre,” says the actor. “And while promoting, it’s important to understand its content in such a way that audiences come to theatres with the right kind of expectations. In this case, we totally succeeded in building the right expectations. From the first look of the film to the trailers, we made sure we portrayed what our film was all about,” he adds. Mahesh also admitted that he never spent so much time promoting a movie.

The actor revealed at a recent press conference that he was working like a computer — moving from one stage to another and spending hours on Twitter personally replying to hundreds of fan tweets.

The next bunch

All eyes are now on producer Gunasekhar’s Rudhramadevi — starring Anushka Shetty, Allu Arjun and Rana Daggubati. Set for a release on September 4, Gunashekhar’s leaving nothing to chance and has literally hit the road with promotions — even targeting educational institutions with the message that his film is a “must watch for students”.

The film also got a tour bus — called Rudhrama Radham — which actually offers gifts to those who photograph it. In fact, it’s a contest launched by  Gunashekhar himself and there’s not a town it hasn’t stopped at. The producer can’t risk a publicity miss because Rudhramadevi has been shot on a budget of Rs 70 crore.

Also, this is perhaps the best time Telugu cinema has had in years! “Moviegoers are finally coming to theatres in huge numbers and it’s definitely a good thing. Earlier, many would just stick to TVs and thankfully, that trend is slowly changing,” says Dil Raju.

Dil Raju, too, promoted the small project Kerintha in a big way by asking the stars to travel to several towns and cities. “Because I believe that if you have good content you should promote it properly. Producers should just announce a release date and then start the promotions. It’s the best way.”