T stars' pan-India appeal shrinking?

The producers of much-hyped productions 'Sarileru Neekeevaru' and 'Ala Vaikuntapuramlo' starring leading stars Mahesh Babu and Allu Arjun respectively and Ravi Teja's 'Disco Raja, are waiting for Hindi distributors to close Hindi dubbing rights `deal' at the earliest.

"It is true that Hindi dubbing rights of these films are not closed till date, although discussions are going on in full swing," says a Mumbai-based Hindi film distributor, who claims that the rates quoted by the producers are on the higher side.

Usually, Hindi dubbing rates for Mahesh Babu, Allu Arjun and Ravi Teja films wary between Rs 17 to Rs 10 crore, but now distributors want them at much-reduced rates.

"No doubt, Telugu superstars had swept pan-Indian small screen viewers off their feet for many years, but some greedy Telugu producers have shot it down with their unreasonable demands," he adds Apart from A-listers like Ram Charan and Jr NTR, even the Hindi market of relatively smaller action heroes like Balakrishna, Bellamkonda Srinivas, Kalyan Ram and Gopichand and few others expanded over the years.

"Action heroes, irrespective of their standing, could attract Hindi distributors for the last few years and producers made merry. They used to extract Rs 7 to 10 crore per film, but those days are gone because some action stars have delivered more disasters than hits to dent their pan-India appeal," he adds.

Unlike in the past, the Hindi distributors are adopting a wait and watch approach before signing fancy deals. "'Not only star ratings, we are looking into the combinations and even the potential of story at times, along with good production values, before inking a deal.

Because many Hindi distributors have gone out of business after burning their hands by buying flop Telugu movies for fancy rates," he points out.

Besides soaring rates, few channels out of four or five Hindi channels like Sony, Zee, Colours and Star- have slowed down buying Telugu movies which added to their woes.

"Few channels have almost cut down buying Telugu films since they are procuring action movies from Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam which cost much less.

The lacklustre and repetitive content has harmed Telugu productions in a big way," adds the distributor. In fact, there no takers for 20-odd movies, of which some of them bombed, the scenario is going from bad to worse in coming days.

"The dubbing rates of lover stories of Nani, Naga Chaitanya, Sharwanand, Nithiin and Nikhil have almost gone on a tailspin," he concludes.