Samantha’s so-called pan-India film, Shaakuntalam, has failed badly at the box office, not only in other languages but also in Telugu. Once the negative word-of-mouth came out after its first show, there is criticism that Telugu filmmakers shouldn’t project each and every film as a pan-India film and bring shame to the Telugu film industry, which is getting respect after Baahubali and RRR.
It is completely wrong to say that makers who want to release their Telugu films on a pan-India level bring shame to the industry. There’s nothing wrong with filmmakers being ambitious. Not every film can be a Baahubali or RRR, but they will help in penetrating the North Indian market. They might seem like failures now, but when we look back after a few years, they would have left some positive impact.
The recent pan-India films from the Telugu industry that have failed in Hindi and other languages were not well-made films, and they flopped in Telugu as well, the only exception being Nani’s Dasara.
Dasara also might have failed in the Hindi belts, but comparatively, it still did much better than the so-called Bollywood superstar Akshay Kumar’s film, Selfiee, which opened at Rs. 2 crores on the all-India level. Whoever watched the film in Hindi had good things to say about it.
If only Rajamouli’s films are considered pan-India, we will have to release only one pan-India film every five years. Let the Telugu filmmakers release their films in other languages as well. Slowly and steadily, the other language audience will get connected to our content. Our Telugu stars will start getting recognized on an all-India level.
We will have to keep making efforts regularly to penetrate and capture other markets, but yes, the makers should concentrate more on coming up with films that have better content than the recent pan-India films like Shaakuntalam and Dhamki.
