9th Pongal fight between Chiru and Balayya

All set for big fight this Sankranthi. This festival we are going to witness four releases starting from Megastar Chiranjeevi’s ‘Khaidi No 150’, Nandamuri Balakrishna’s ‘Gauthamiputra Satakarni’, Sharwanand starrer ‘Shatamanam Bhavati’ and R Narayanamurthy’s ‘Headconstable Venkatramaiah’. But obviously, the focus is on Chiranjeevi and Balakrishna’s milestone movies.

Milestone movies

Both ‘Khaidi No 150’ and ‘Gauthamiputra Satakarni’ are very special movies. Since Chiranjeevi is returning to silver screen as lead hero after a gap of nearly 9 years, ‘Khaidi No 150’ has been hogging the headlines. On the other hand, ‘Gauthamiputra Satakarni’ is 100th movie in Balakrishna’s career and the movie is about a great Telugu emperor whose story is not widely known. Which is why, everyone is discussing about these movies and have booked the tickets in advance.

Chiru Vs Balakrishna: 9th Sankranthi battle

Chiranjeevi ruled Tollywood as number one from the days of ‘Khaidi’ and ‘Pasivadi Pranam’. He owned the number one place till he entered into politics in 2008. Still, Balakrishna also gave tough fight to Chiranjeevi all through those years. There is recorded history of fights between the fans of these two stars in the 80’s, 90’s and early 2000’s. Such fierce competition the two stars had during their prime of the career. Their respective films competed with each other about 14 times but they fought eight times during Sankranthi festival so far. This latest Pongal fight between Chiru and Balayya with ‘Khaidi No 150’ and ‘Gauthamiputra Satakarni’ is for the 9th time.

1987 – Donga Mogudu vs Bhargava Ramudu
1988 – Manchi Donga vs Inspector Pratap
1989 – Attaku Yamudu vs Bhale Donga
1994 – Mugguru Monagallu vs Bhairawa Dweepam
1997 – Hitler vs Peddannayya
2000 – Annayya vs Vamsoddarakudu
2001 – Mrugaraju vs Narasimha Naidu
2004 – Anji vs Lakshmi Narasimha
2017 – Khaidi No 150 vs Gauthamiputra Satakarni

Rs 180 Cr business

A total of Rs 180 Cr is at stake at this Sankranthi festival box-office on all four movies. Megastar Chiranjeevi’s movie did the business to the tune of Rs 90 – 100 Cr alone. All in all, 2017 Sankranthi will be going to be remembered for long time by the fans, Telugu film lovers as two of the biggest stars of Tollywood releasing their milestone movies.