Sankranti to be filmi feast in Telugu states

Vijayawada: Telugus’ biggest festival Sankranti turns into a big celebration to fans of top heroes Nandamuri Balakrishna, Daggubati Venkatesh and family members of megastar Chiranjeevi.

Four movies, including Rajanikanth’s Peta and Balakrishna’s prestigious project NTR Biopic Kathanayakudu, Ramcharan’s Vinaya Vidheya Rama, Venkatesh and Varun Tej’s F-2 (Sankranti Allullu) are all set to be released in the next week ahead of Sankranti festival.

Hence, the fans of heroes in particular and the audience in general are making plans to watch the movies by reserving tickets while the distributors are facing problems to release the movie as per schedule due to shortage of theatres.

The distributors say this is first time that the movies of four top heroes are getting released in a week. Balakrishna’s Kathanayakudu movie will hit the screens on January 9 as the first in the four-movies. Balakrishna filmed his father NTR’s life story in two parts.

The first part of the movie can be watched in theatres from Wednesday morning. The entire Telugu people are interestingly waiting to watch the movie. The producers of the movie got permission from the state government to exhibit two shows daily.  

Besides, megastar Chirnajeevi’s son Ramcharan entered the race of Sankranti movies release on behalf his father mega star Chirnajeevi with Vinaya Vidheya Rama. Chiranjeevi’s re-entry movie Khaidi Number-150 was released as Sankranti movie in 2017. Now the fans of Chiranjeevi can celebrate his son Ramcharan’s movie from January 11.

Interestingly, Tamil super star Rajanikanth’s movie Peta is being released on January 10 and the release date of Venkatesh and Varun Tej’s F-2 movie is January 12. All the movies are getting released four days consecutively from Wednesday. So, the movie lovers and fans of top heroes can celebrate the Sankranti festival with the bunch of movies.   

Mainly the Telugu movies business depend on the markets of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Nearly 2,000 theatres, excluding multiplexes, are in the two Telugu states. But the each film maker is making efforts to release his movie in more than 1,000 screens in the two states and 2,000 screens across the globe including southern states.  

The trend of releasing movies of the popular heroes has become a big challenge for the distributors. The film makers of the heroes are releasing the movies with table profit. Nowadays, the budget of the movies with stars has also touched nearly Rs 100 crore.  

Indeed, there will be no problem for Ramcharan’s Vinaya Vidheya Rama and Venkatesh’s F-2 movies to get theatres. Both families have chains of theatres in their kitty in the two states. As a result, the situation turned difficult to find theatres for Rajanikanth’s movie Peta in the two states.   

Sakthi Films proprietor Mutyala Ramesh said that more than two movies of top heroes should not be released in a week. Presently, Rajanikanth’s movie can be released only in six screens in Krishna district while the remaining three movies are likely to be released in more than 50 screens.

He also said that it is difficult to get back the investments of distributors in such competition. He said that nowadays the film makers are releasing the movies at their own risk.