Pawan’s remake dream run ends

Superstar Pawan Kalyan who is also hailed as ‘remake specialist’ since some of the biggest hits of his career were Tamil remakes. Beginning with his maiden hit ‘Gokulamlo Seetha’ (Gokulathil Seethai), followed by “Suswagatham” (Love Today) but blockbuster “Kushi” (Kushi) fetched him superstardom, while ‘Annavaram’ (Tirupacchi) cemented his position at the top.

So, after a gap, when he picked up another Tamil film “Veeram”, for a remake, his fans went berserk and hoped that he would spin box-office magic and erase the bad memories of dud “Gabbar Singh 2”, but it went awry. Even though, the action saga Katamarayudu, drew sensational openings of more than Rs 60 crore share in the first first, but gradually losing its steam at the box-office.

“Pawan Kalyan’s charisma pulled off record-breaking openings but some fans were disappointed as Pawan was not in his elements and wafer-thin storyline added to their woes,” says leading distributor M Venkateswar Rao, of Krishna district. “Distributors in some areas will be losing 30 to 40% of their investment as collections are dropping drastically at many places, so Pawan’s `remake’ dream run comes to a grinding halt,” he adds.

However, ace director-producer Bheemaneni Srinivasa Rao, who directed Pawan in two Tamil remakes `Suswagatham’ and `Annavaram’ says remaking star-studded Tamil film is a challenge by itself.

“Firstly, I didn’t watch ‘Katamarayudu’ yet but we can taste success with remakes, provided we retain the soul of the original script and avoid copying frame-to-frame,” he says and adds “Adapting it to Telugu sensibilities is another major task and also the body language and mannerisms of Tamil and Telugu star varies, so we have to re-work on it and above-all the emotional quotient of the original shouldn’t be compromised for the sake of commercial ingredients, so it’s like walking on a twin-edged sword,” he adds.

However, director Ravi Chavali has a different take on it. “Expectations on superstars films run high and sometimes it’s difficult to live up to them. Nevertheless, it could be original or a remake, but script should have enough potential to keep audience glued to their seats for three hours or else it is going to be difficult,” he concludes.

By BVS Prakash