Master craftsman SS Rajamouli took Telugu cinema to places that were hard to even imagine. He is the only director to have two Rs 1000 crore grossers – RRR and Baahubali 2. He opened up untapped markets for Telugu cinema with monumental blockbusters.
That said, Tollywood is still struggling to fully explore the uncharted avenues that Rajamouli opened up for Telugu cinema.
While Rajamouli has two Rs 1000 crore grossers, no other Telugu hero or director has even a Rs 500 crore grosser at the Indian box office. The likes of Saaho and Pushpa 2 did well in pan Indian space, but they too couldn’t touch the Rs 500 crore mark.
It has been six years since Baahubali 2, and the market for Tollywood has increased exponentially in other languages, but there haven’t been enough films that have made full use of the same.
The main reason here is that the elite league Telugu directors haven’t been making progressive steps in this regard. Sukumar did it to a good extent with Pushpa, but as said by himself, he too wasn’t expecting the pan-Indian reach the film got. Trivikram hasn’t even touched the pan India prospect till now.
Incidentally, other language directors like Prashanth Neel and Atlee have made better use of pan-India prospects than Tollywood directors who have all the resources for it.
While Rajamouli is breaking new ground, Tollywood, as an industry is yet to put its hands up.
