2017 Tollywood first quarter: Hits and Flops

The first quarter of the academic calendar comes to a close today. Tollywood has seen highs, super-highs, lows and super-lows so far. The year began with a Mega thunder. ‘Khaidi No. 150’ collected much more than what conventional estimates might have suggested. It holds the record for being the biggest non-‘Baahubali’ movie at the box office. Megastar Chiranjeevi, it’s now clear, is still box-office powerhouse.

Sankranthi brought to Tollywood two more money-minting machines in the form of two movies. Balakrishna’s ‘Gautamiputra Satakarni’ turned out to be the biggest hit in the actor’s career. The historical and Chiru’s mass entertainer met with competition from ‘Shatamanam Bhavati’, a family entertainer. The film became so huge a hit that analysts even talked about how it might have affected the BO stamina of ‘GPSK’. Many sections of family audiences chose to watch either ‘GPSK’ or ‘SB’ but not both. If ‘SB’ had not arrived, ‘GPSK’ would have earned much more. 

In February, Nani delivered his career biggest hit. ‘Nenu Local’, the year’s second Dil Raju production after ‘SB’, proved that the Natural Star is someone who can take a film to new heights on his own strength. Weeks later, NTR would call him the best actor at IIFA Utsavam Awards!

‘Ghazi’, the submarine war film directed by a debutante, brought good news to PVP. The film benefited from critical acclaim in terms of revenue. 

‘Kittu Unnadu Jagratha’ gave a fillip to Anil Sunkara’s production house, giving Raj Tarun every reason to smile. The crime comedy started giving returns to distributors quite early on. 

‘Nagaram’ brought tears (those ‘ananda bashpalu’) to Sundeep Kishan. While the Tamil version turned out to be a blockbuster, the Telugu version won more critical acclaim than the gross.

‘Katamarayudu’ on March 24 opened to one of the biggest openings ever. After a week, the mass entertainer still holds evidence of Pawan Kalyan’s huge stardom. 

Flops galore..

The hiccups have been too bad, too worst. 

‘Om Namo Venkatesaya’ turned out losses to the tune of more than 70 per cent to the distributors. Its failure casts doubts about the currency of devotionals in today’s times. The Manchu brothers both had a super-flop each: ‘Luckunnodu’ and ‘Gunturodu’ were rejected by the audience as they lacked content. 

‘Dwaraka’ was so big a flop that Vijay Devarakonda said sorry to those who didn’t like the movie. He didn’t say that he was sorry that he did a bad movie. 

One film had the most ironical of titles ever. Mega hero Sai Dharam Tej’s ‘Winner’ was a sore loser in BO race. Gopichand Malineni had a shocker of a verdict from people. The people couldn’t have cared less for Anjali’s ‘Chitrangada’. The thriller had no takers from day one. 

All in all, the experience so far shows that content rules.