NTR, Prabhas, Ram Charan: What Exactly Went Wrong?

War 2, Adipurush, and Zanjeer show how blind trust in Bollywood filmmakers often ends in failure. Collaborations between different industries are not wrong as they can bring new flavours, but stars signing projects without checking a director’s record has cost them heavily. This overconfidence has pushed even big names like Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, and Salman Khan to be cautious, while in Tollywood, stars trusting unproven Hindi directors has repeatedly caused disasters.

Ram Charan is a classic example. After rewriting box office history with Magadheera, he rushed into Zanjeer with Apoorva Lakhia, known for disasters. The film bombed badly and critics mocked his performance, calling him wooden. It left a mark on his career. Fortunately, social media was not as aggressive then. If it had been, the backlash would have been far more damaging.

Prabhas also made the same mistake with Adipurush. Trusting Om Raut and T-Series after Tanhaji, he accepted the role of Lord Rama. The film ended up as one of the most ridiculed big-budget projects in recent years. Poor visual effects and weak execution invited strong criticism. For Prabhas, it still remains one of the biggest embarrassments of his career and hurt his reputation deeply.

The same pattern can be seen now with War 2. Instead of sticking with Siddharth Anand, who gave a blockbuster with War, the makers handed the film to Ayan Mukerji. His strength is in romantic dramas like Wake Up Sid and Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani. His last film Brahmastra failed to meet expectations, showing he cannot handle large-scale action films. War 2 turned out to be a disaster. Even Jr. NTR’s powerful promotions could not save it as reviews from North and South were overwhelmingly negative.

These cases reveal a dangerous pattern. Stars are placing blind trust in Bollywood directors who fail to understand the pulse of Telugu superstars. They do not know their strengths, weaknesses, or stardom and depend only on PR-driven information. Such shallow understanding leads to weak portrayals that fans reject. The failure becomes inevitable when a director has no real connection with the actor.

A director must spend time with the actor, study his style, and showcase him correctly on screen. When that effort is missing, the disconnect is visible. This is exactly what happened with Jr. NTR in War 2, where his potential was wasted due to a lack of understanding from the filmmaker.