The SS Rajamouli film RRR, made at a budget of Rs 350-400 crore, was sold to the Hindi theatrical markets and electronic media in all languages for Rs 340 crore, and is expected to make around Rs 350 crore in Hindi and around Rs 700 crore in all the south markets put together.
SS Rajamouli. (By Arrangement)
The film has been sold for Rs. 75 crore in Nizam, Rs165 crore in Andhra Pradesh, Rs. 48 crore in Tamil Nadu, Rs 15 crores for the Kerala market and Rs 45 crore in Karnataka. Trade analyst Ramesh Bala says that it will need to recover a little less than double these monies for the buyers to start making profits.
“There seems to be hope that this kind of money can be recovered easily in a few of the south markets, given the way Bheemla Nayak and Valimai have been received,” said Bala.
RRR, which was mounted on a huge scale, was offered a great deal for Hindi theatrical rights and all electronic rights including digital and satellite, way before the film was complete. Mumbai-based Jayantilal Gada of PEN snapped up the rights for Rs 340 crore.
DVV Danayya, the producer of RRR, who had quoted Rs 300 crore as the budget of the film, admitted later that Rs 350-400 crore would be needed for Rajamouli to make the kind of film he wanted, and he opened his coffers. After all, Baahubali had made a profit of over Rs 600 crore.
Rajamouli and others flew into Mumbai to decide on postponing RRR’s release from the scheduled date of January 7 as Gada, the major stakeholder, would have run into huge losses with theatres shutting due to Omicron. The makers had to recover only Rs 60 crore from the sale of the film in the southern markets and in Telugu itself it had fetched a fabulous price. Hence Rajamouli and other producers were already in the black.
Jayantilal Gada and Rajamouli. (By Arrangement)
Gada has sold the electronic rights of the film in various languages to satellite and digital and had also made a profit, though he still has to pay Rajamouli Rs 100 crore. He is expected to do that when he receives the final print of the film during release, according to an informed industry source.
Who is Jayantilal Gada
Jayantilal Gada, who started a video library like Ram Gopal Varma and Madhur Bhandarkar after he completed Standard X, went on to trade in films for Doordarshan and the satellite network. He has a huge bank of films and acquired movies for several satellite channels before turning producer. He has backed many films, like Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani and the Akshay Kumar starrer Entertainment. Recently, he has pumped big money into films like Gangubai Kathiawadi which he acquired from Sanjay Leela Bhansali for Rs 150 crore, and now RRR.
Jayantilal Gada. (By Arrangement)
The actors take...
For the Baahubali series, Prabhas was paid Rs 25 crore and Rana Daggubati got Rs 15 crore. Rajamouli took Rs 28 crore as his fees. Now, it is being said that Rajamouli will take 30 percent of RRR’s profits as his fees, while the two other RRs — Ram Charan and Jr NTR — have taken Rs 45 crore each. Ajay Devgn was given Rs 25 crore for his cameo and Alia Bhatt got Rs 9 crore for her role.
The production cost of the film, including the fees of technicians, is being calculated at over Rs 225 crores, including the cost of multiple locations and the interval sequence which itself cost Rs 75 lakh per day and was shot for 65 days, totalling around Rs 49 crore.
