Tollywood – Reason For Suriya Downfall?

The last time Suriya film opened to shockingly poor numbers was 24. It was attributed to the genre and wrong release time in Tamil Nadu as there were elections going on (basically election period). Now, Singam 3 too has opened to below par numbers. There is clearly no genre excuse.

[m9ad]

Also one can’t talk about release period as there has been no real big release in Tamil cinema for a long time now. Even Vijay’s Bairavaa which released for Pongal was terrible. Ideally, Singam 3 should have opened to bumper response but it didn’t. One can again give lots of excuses, like delays and other issues, but at the core of it all is Telugu Film Industry the reason behind it?

Let’s look at Suriya in Tamil from TFI perspective. Suriya was rising as a star slowly with films like Ghajini, Pithamagan etc. The Telugu dub of both these films proved to be great successes. It established Suriya as a versatile artist in Telugu cinema and people expected different films from him.

However, for any star to get strong foothold locally, there have to be mass films and mass base. With the success of the above-mentioned films in Telugu, Suriya started planning films keeping Telugu market in the back of mind. Soon his subjects and release timings had to meet the TFI requirement. All of these meant Suriya kept losing ground locally. Today, he has reached a place where newer stars are replacing him locally.

It might be difficult at this point but the solution to bounce back is simple. Make strong mass films rooted in Tamil. It would be ideal if they have universal appeal but that is not a necessary requirement. Or take a drastic approach and do a direct big mass movie in Telugu with Telugu director that can be released in Tamil. Whatever it may be the focus has to be to make films for one rooted community rather than for everyone and end up being neither here nor there.