Promoting a film is part of the game. Stars have to talk about their movies, directors have to build excitement and producers have to make sure the film gets attention. Nobody expects a team to stay quiet before a big release.
The problem is when promotion goes beyond creating hype and starts making huge promises.
Tollywood has seen this happen before. During Devara promotions, producer Kalyan Ram compared the film’s visual experience with Game of Thrones. After the release, that statement came back into the discussion when sections of the audience felt the film did not live up to such a comparison. The old promotional comments became easy material for trolls.
Kanguva faced a similar situation from a different angle. Producer Gnanavel Raja made extremely ambitious claims about the film’s box-office potential and scale. When the film received a mixed response, those earlier statements became part of the online trolling.
This is where the industry needs to be careful. Saying that a film is special is one thing. Saying that nobody has ever made anything like it, or setting comparisons with established global benchmarks, creates a completely different expectation.
And this trend has not stopped.
Raaka is already generating massive curiosity, with director Cibi Chakravarthi saying that the visuals shown to him by Atlee were unlike anything he had seen, even comparing them with Avatar. The film has not even released yet, so there is no question of judging the claim now. But statements like these automatically put the spotlight on the actual visuals when they arrive.
The Paradise is another film being promoted on a very ambitious scale, with Nani and director Srikanth Odela promising a different kind of experience.
There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, big films need big publicity. But there is a thin line between creating curiosity and creating expectations that become difficult to satisfy.
Once that line is crossed, the audience does not just discuss the film. They start discussing everything the team said before the release.
That is when promotion can turn into a problem of its own.
