Who should take blame for NTR's colossal failure?

Till the other day media was largely silent when it comes to the unexpectedly bad performance of ‘NTR: Kathanayakudu’. But nobody can remain mum and nobody can deny that the biopic is a colossal failure.

The film raked in mere Rs 10.50 Cr (share) from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in its five first days which is too low for a Balayya movie. Balakrishna’s ‘Jai Simha’ which released last Sankranthi collected better than this high-profile movie.

‘NTR Kathanayakudu’ has some chances of raking in decent money from Monday to Wednesday due to the Sankranthi festival holidays, but even if it does that, it will end up a disaster. The very high pre-release business will ensure that the percentage of recovery for distributors is low.

Who should take the blame for this mess?

The film was originally written before Krish joined the project. He penned the screenplay in a plain fashion. Did he not get enough time to notice the apparent flaws in the unexciting narration? Did he get carried away by the story of NTR and the casting? Did he focus too much on dialogues (by Sai Madhav Burra) and too little on nuances? Did he compound problems by making it into two parts?

Or should Balakrishna take the blame? It’s he who went ahead with playing young NTR’s role and killed the interest, perhaps He has stated that it was not so difficult to play his father’s role. Balayya may well have taken things for granted.

While most critics hesitated to give low rating only out of respect for late NTR, it was a dull, ‘stagey’ and a totally uninteresting movie. All distributors will end up losing more than 60% on their investment.