60 Cr Wastage? Raja Saab Balance Sheet Nightmare

The Sankranti release Raja Saab turned out to be an epic embarrassment for Prabhas fans. The film not only flopped badly at the box office, but also became national level troll material. Now that the film’s run is over and it is getting ready for its OTT release, details about the film’s financial performance are slowly coming out. While the exact loss figures have not been officially announced, industry sources believe the film caused massive losses to People Media Factory.

Box office failure is one issue, but the bigger shock has been the amount of wasted footage. Reports suggest that the team shot more than four hours of content, but only around three hours were used in the final version. This means nearly one full hour of footage was completely scrapped. Trade circles estimate that this unused material alone resulted in losses of around Rs. 60 crores, which has raised serious concerns.

At one point, the team even thought about releasing Raja Saab as a two part film. However, director Maruthi was not in favor of this idea. He already has a separate story planned for Raja Saab 2 and felt that splitting the existing footage would weaken the impact. Instead, he preferred making a proper sequel with a fresh script, and the two part idea was dropped.

Some also felt that the unused scenes could have been edited and released later on OTT as bonus or extended content. Unfortunately, that did not happen either. Producer TG Vishwa Prasad had hoped that if the film had become a hit, it would have helped cover losses and kept the balance sheet in green. But that plan backfired.

In the end, instead of recovering money, the project added more financial pressure. Raja Saab has now become an example of how weak content, excess footage, and poor planning can lead to heavy losses, especially when the hero is Prabhas.