Comedy genre dominates remakes from Malayalam cinema

Dulquer Salman, Fahadh Faasil and Nivin Pauly too may be top of the mind recall heroes back home but their films don't add up to anything impressive as far as remake market is concerned

With the Telugu audience of today very familiar with films from various Indian languages, (not to speak of having built a fan following for their favourite stars in the neighbouring film zones of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu which is available 24x7) seeing them in dubbed/subtitled versions and across satellite/OTT platforms, it seems appropriate in a way to understand how the trend has been when it comes to remaking films from other south Indian languages and what is more popular among our film watchers.

In a series attempted earlier, the remake trends from Tamil to Telugu had been taken up as also those films which were remade from Telugu to Hindi language. In the recent past, ever since the younger generation protagonists like Prabhas, Allu Arjun, Mahesh Babu, Ram Charan, Jr NTR etc have made their entry into Telugu cinema, their films have regularly been hitting the bull's eye in distant Kerala in its dubbed versions. This makes it relevant to understand and study the remakes that have hit the silver screens in the Telugu states over the past two decades of the new millennium.

A study from the data available in public domain reveals that, from 2000, nearly 50 films have been taken up for remaking in Telugu and barring Chiranjeevi and Balakrishna, most of the leading names have acted in them. The megastar is to appear in a Malayalam remake for the first time in the 21st century when his 'Godfather' is expected to hit the stands during Dasara 2022. Balakrishna however is yet to be featured in any remake, given that his films are a unique blend of machismo and unbelievable action which cannot be visualised earlier by anyone.

Statistically continuing with the remake findings, it is seen that 25 out of 48 films listed fall under the comedy category, the subheads being romantic comedy, comedy thriller, comedy drama, black comedy, comedy horror and so on. Films like ' Bodyguard' ( Venkatesh, Trisha), ' Raju Gari Gadhi 2' ( Nagarjuna, Samantha) ' Ulavacharu Biryani' ( Prakash Raj, Sneha) all fall under this broad sweep having appealed wonderfully well to the Kerala film watchers.

The local audience is highly familiar with names like Mammootty, Mohanlal, Prithviraj Sukumaran etc. These stars, back home have acted in films whose numbers easily overtake the big names in the larger film industries of Chennai and Hyderabad, from Chiranjeevi at one end and Kamal Haasan at the other. Yet, as far as remakes go, none of the three above names, apart from the recently famous Dulquer Salman, Fahadh Faasil and Nivin Pauly have had their hits remade in Telugu as much as yet another hero in Malayalam cinema – Dileep- who is right now facing a host of legal issues for a criminal case of sexual harassment he subjected a Malayalam heroine to.

A close look at the remake trends reveal that Dileep has had 10 hit films of his remade into Malayalam, pipping Mohanlal who has had seven and Nivin Pauly who follows the top two with four. All the big names together of course have more than half of the remakes credited to their original releases, yet Dileep stands out for his consistent appeal even among the second rung heroes who have performed his roles in Telugu.

With 'Victory' Venkatesh reprising his role in ' Bodyguard', his other films were lapped up by names like Ravi Teja, Dr Rajasekhar, Srikanth, Sunil, Vishnu Manchu and Venu Thottempudi who is attempting a comeback once again into Telugu cinema after a gap now. More such interesting factoids, trivia and sidelights would follow in the forthcoming weeks as we take up popular remake films of the new millennium, one by one, released between 2000 and 2022.