Female centric movies losing sheen

In recent times, the news of glam diva Shruti Haasan doing the role of a warrior in ‘Sanghamithra’ became a hot topic and everyone felt that the Gen X actress would revive the sagging fortunes of female-centric movies in T-town. But all of sudden, she walked out of the project, citing lack of dates and also longer span of shooting could affect her running projects.

“Shruti had to unfortunately take a call not to be part of ‘Sanghamithra’, since there was no comprehensive script and long date calendar. She had to walk out of epic fantasy to respect her other commitments,” says a statement from the actress.

However, industry sources, say that she has taken a right decision, since audience are shunning female-centric films in T-town. “It is true that female-centric movies are losing their charm, as Telugu audience has stopped patronsing heroine-driven films of late,” says director Srinivasa Reddy, who cites disasters like ‘Dora’, ‘Chitragangadha’ and ‘Jyothilaxmi’.

However, undeterred with downslide of the genre, young actress Tamannaah, who delivered a flop ‘Devi(L)’ is now reportedly doing an author-backed- role in director Kunal Kohli’s upcoming multi-lingual untitled film to show her star power. “It is a new challenge for Tamannaah,” says a source.

It should be recalled that a few years ago, female-centric movies were selling like hot cakes after pretty damsel Charmme delivered hits like ‘Anaganaga Oka Roju’ and ‘Mantra’ and proved that heroines can draw crowds on the strength of their names but lost her way after duds like ‘Mantra 2’.

Similarly, Nayantara proved her mettle with a spooky film ‘Mayuri’ but couldn’t repeat the success with ‘Dora’. Last but not the least, pretty actress Trisha joined the bandwagon of women-centric films with ‘Nayaki’ but had a bitter experience, while actress Anjali had one big hit in ‘Geetanjali’ and one big flop ‘Chitrangadha’ and not in demand these days.

“Some actresses take up female-centric films at the last leg of their careers as offers with top heroes dry up and try to prove a point, but only a few succeed,” says producer C Kalyan, who describes Anushka as `queen bee’ of T-town since she has been accepted in ‘Baahubali’ franchise as well as in ‘Rudramadevi’, so she is a class apart and has longer stint in T-town.

However, director Dasarath has a different take on this trend. “It’s not fair to blame actresses for poor scripts, since a few women-oriented films tanked at the box-office due to lacklustre plots, even though actresses did a good job. Just one more female-centric blockbuster, will reverse this trend,” he concludes.