Projecting Telugu films as pan-India a 'flawed idea'

After the massive success of ‘RRR’, “Pushpa’ and ‘Karthikeya 2, many Telugu filmmakers jumped into the bandwagon of ‘pan-India’ and felt that the North Indian audience would lap up their big ticket action films. However, Telugu films like ‘Dasara’ and ‘Virupaksha’ which rocked box office in Telugu states and average grosser 'Das Ki Damki' couldn't taste similar response among North Indian viewers and invariably denting the pan-India frenzy.

“Surely, Telugu films’ popularity is waning in North India due to poor and repetitive content since all Telugu films are not meant for pan India. Telugu filmmakers have to offer something on par with ‘Pushpa’ in terms of content, massive budget and wonderful songs. Usual love stories and black magic stories don’t work here since Bollywood boasts of love stories which no one can match,” says a Hindi film distributor, who also suggests Telugu filmmakers to re-design their promotional strategy to draw more eyeballs from Hindi film viewers.

He claims that Telugu heroes and directors have to aggressively promote their films in Bollywood and spend a couple of days in Mumbai and Delhi to trigger a decent buzz around their films, rather than just releasing them without generating proper hype. “A film has to be released in minimum 100-odd theatres across Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, UP and Bihar to mint a decent amount of money, otherwise these films will be relegated to second grade theatres and will go unnoticed. A Telugu producer has to spend at least Rs 4 to 5 crores for promotions besides splashing ads in top channels and newspapers, or else it would be wasted effort,” he points out.

With Ram Pothineni’s action saga ‘Skanda’ set to release in multiple languages including Hindi across India on September 28. Followed by Ravi Teja’ starrer ‘Tiger Nageswara Rao' in November. Its Hindi trailers have already triggered some hype. 

“We are going to promote the film in a big way in Bollywood since our action adventure has universal appeal. We understand the taste of Hindi films viewers and we hope to cash in on it,” says producer Abhishek Agarwal, who dabbles with Hindi movies these days.