RRR – Rise, Roar and Revolt or Ranam, Roudhram and Rudhiram, is the kind of movie that Indian Cinema needs right now. Two Superstars coming together with another superstar in a cameo and a super succesful director making it, the film has all the ingredients required to make Cinema viewers go ballistic at the theatres for tickets.
Lakshya and Gamanam films did not even register respectable footfalls even though they boost of known figures in the cast. RRR has Ram Charan teaming up with Jr. NTR and SS Rajamouli.
RRR also has Ajay Devgn in a cameo and Alia Bhatt in an extended appearance as Sita. Olivia Morris is playing lady lead for Jr. NTR. Both the superstars never acted in a multistarrer before and they are sharing screen space for the first time with each other.
Ajay Devgn’s character will be key in deciding the path of Ramraju and Bheem who later become known historic figures – Alluri Seetharamaraju and Komaram Bheem, respectively, according to Rajamouli’s imagination.
SS Rajamouli clarified long back that he is making his version of history and it is like Inglorious Bastards where he is going to narrate his version of fictionalized history like a film story.
The director also made it clear that movie is about friendship and hence, central characters coming from two different backgrounds and one feeling betrayed by other is important.
Even though trailer reveals most of the story on the platter, the movie team is confident that audiences will be thrilled to watch entire sequences unfold in front of their eyes on largest screen formats possible.
Rajamouli is going for a 3 hour long cut as well like never before, as he feels cinema story has that much engaging power with two leads. Scott character from British East India company, will be seen as major villain in this film.
Coming to the real problem on our hands. On one hand, Akhanda proved that low ticket prices don’t affect box office recovery but they will definitely slow it all down. On the other hand, Lakshya and Gamanam, Skylab did not even register decent footfalls.
The low ticket prices did not help the above mentioned three movies to gather enough traction among the audiences. This proves that the theory of low ticket prices will relatively allow audiences to watch more films, as a rather meek and moot argument.
People in Telangana did not mind higher pricing for Akhanda and the movie recovered its prices by the end of first week. It is having tough time in doing so in Andhra Pradesh. One night argue, the producers could have gone for low asking prices or even distributors could have offered lesser amounts.
Big films like Pushpa, RRR, RadheShyam had to wait till pandemic eases out to annouce their release dates. With low ticket prices, even they turn out to be crowd pullers and big hits, they will not recover the money as each one will eat into other’s business in coming weeks.
None of these films were made after April 2020 and the cost of production was decided long before, Andhra Pradesh State Government took decision to change Ticket prices.
Well, as Pushpa The Rise team gave up on asking the government, all eyes are on RRR team with muscle power like no one else. They can say that the pride of Indian Cinema coming from Telugu language shouldn’t be seen doing week business in a Telugu state. They might ask for slight increase and exception atleast till the end of Sankranti season upto Republic Day weekend.
With the kind of attention National Media is giving the film and kind of crowd pull it promises, government might also find going against the wishes of makers might Backlash with youngsters thinking and believing that government is trying hard to see their agenda politics win but not working for them.
Hopefully, we might see a good resolution to the problems in coming days. Helping even Pushpa to go for slightly better pricing, helping distributors to recover costs.
