BO Rewind: Rajinikanth And Chiranjeevi Couldn’t Beat It For Years

Superstar Rajinikanth and Megastar Chiranjeevi are the biggest stars of the respective industries. They are also among the top in South Indian cinema. Naturally, whenever they get a blockbuster talk for their movies, they set new records. However, surprisingly they couldn’t beat the records of this gigantic blockbuster movie despite getting such word of mouth.

The film in question is nothing but the iconic and all-time classic Bharateeyudu starring Kamal Haasan. Originally in Tamil, titled Indian, the movie is the first time combination of Kamal Haasan with director Shankar. Together they created history at the box office, which took years to reach for the biggest contemporary stars of the time.

Bharateeyudu hit cinemas on May 9th and went on to become a Pan-India blockbuster. Back then, Tamil cinema riding on Mani Ratnam and AR Rahman wave were creating impact nationally. Bharateeyudu, dubbed as Hindustani in Hindi, was its peak. The fact that it (Hindustani) couldn’t be surpassed until the first Baahubali should explain the phenomenal response.

Bharateeyudu scored massive numbers in Tamil and Telugu on the Southern front and emerged as a South Indian Industry Hit.

The ‘combined numbers’ of the Shankar magnum opus couldn’t be surpassed by Rajinikanth or Chiranjeevi. The latter still didn’t have multiple language release to have a chance, but Rajini couldn’t do it despite bilingual releases and positive talks. He finally crossed Bharateeyudu with Chandramukhi.

Remember here we are talking about ‘South Indian Industry Hit’ and not just Industry Hit in a single language. Padayappa (Narasimha) was Industry Hit in Tamil Nadu, but couldn’t surpass Indian (Bharateeyudu) when included other languages.