Mollywood to Tollywood - 22: The trouble a selfie can cause….

Crime comedy thrillers at once make the audience laugh and simultaneously be involved with the proceedings onscreen with minimum attention diversions. A clever screenplay can relax the viewers with the humorous scenes unfolding while the backstory which is laced with a certain level of suspense keeps them hooked till the last.

Nivin Pauly's 'Oru Vadakkan Selfie' (2015) had all the qualifications to be considered as a non-stop entertainer and that enabled its box-office success substantially. Having made his debut in 2012, by the time this film got released three years later, 31-year-old Pauly had already bagged 15 movies, a few of them raising his box-office standings to a high in Malayalam cinema. He had Manjima Mohan as his female lead, who made her Malayalam debut with this film and who is now married to Tamil actor Gautham Karthik.

Director G Prajith who had helmed the original was retained for the Telugu version released in 2017 titled 'Meda Meeda Abbayi', starring Allari Naresh and Nikhila Vimal, who was making her maiden splash in Telugu cinema. By then, in a career spanning 15 years, Naresh had acted in more than 50+ films, most of them in the light, fluffy categories. It was just normal for the production team to consider they had the right fit with the hero and the heroine was a new face, which actually did not impact the project in any way. The music director Shaan Rehman also was brought in to compose music for the Tollywood production.

What worked for the original did not obviously for the reprised version. It could have been the adaptation or even the performance levels which ultimately made the difference among the film viewing public. The Nivin Pauly starrer made a handsome return of Rs 25 crore, more than six times the investment of Rs 4 crore as per market estimates.

Surprisingly, the Telugu remake received good reviews by and large yet failed to appeal to the Telugu audience whose entertainment quotient was not met with this production. Naresh too slipped into relative inactivity after this release as for the next five years, he has had only five more films added to his kitty. While the successful 2021 release 'Naandhi' kept him in the hunt, his latest release 'Itlu Maredumalli Prajaneekam' has been a damp squib.

Film: Meda Meeda Abbayi (2017)

Starring: Allari Naresh, Nikhila Vimal

Directed by: G Prajith

Remade from: Oru Vadakkan Selfie (2015)