In what could be a first of its kind for Pawan Kalyan film and eight film in Tollywood, Agnyaathavaasi has crossed the 2 Million USD mark in the US. Also, this is the first Telugu film in 2018 to surpass the 2 Million USD mark. After six days of its release (Jan 15, 2018 EST), Agnyaathavaasi breached the 2 M USD mark by standing at 2.017 M USD.

The film being directed by Trivikram Srinivas stands next to NTR’s Nannaku Prematho which is at 7th position.

Revenue-wise Highest Grossers at US BO (Gross)

Baahubali2 (11.88 M USD)
Baahubali (6.99 M USD)
Srimanthudu (2.89 M USD)
A Aa (2.445 M USD)
Khaidi No 150 (2.44 M USD)
Fidaa (2.07 M USD)
NannakuPrematho (2.022 M USD)
Agnyaathavaasi (2.017 M USD)

Meanwhile, the film’s US distributors are clueless whether to laugh or cry over the record, since the film still needs another 2.5 Million USD gross to enter into safe zone. This is very peculiar case. Even fans are stumbled as no idea whether to celebrate or disappoint over this huge disaster.

On the other hand, trade is expecting Agnyaathavaasi to beat Nannaku Prematho and Fidaa comfortably and move two ranks up the ladder and may finally end at 6th highest grosser in the US.

Many high budget films, mainly focusing on historical subjects and extensive visual effects, have been announced after witnessing the sensational box office run of Baahubali. Afresh, surprising many, the makers of a relatively low budget Malayalam film claims that VFX in their film will be on par with Baahubali’s!

The film in news is, Malayalam superstar Mammootty’s “0”. Set in the late 17th century, the film’s story revolves around the life of warriors. Despite being made on a considerably low budget when compared to Baahubali, the makers aim to have ‘Baahubali-standard’ VFX. And, to achieve that, they have roped in ‘Baahubali’ VFX supervisor Kamal Kannan.

The senior VFX supervisor, in a recent interview, divulged that he was asked by the team of Mamaankam to develop visual effects on par with Baahubali and that he promised them to do his best with the allocated budget.

Tamil star hero Vijay’s “Puli” was the first film to boast of having better VFX than Baahubali. But, when the film, for which Kamal Kannan worked, finally released, the CGI work was criticized for looking amateurish when compared to the Telugu epic film. Considering this example, its high time filmmakers refrained from comparing their films with Baahubali and making very tall claims. The unwarranted comparison might most probably backfire as ‘Baahubali’ is unrepeatable.

Veteran actress Nadhiya, who became a household name in the Telugu states after playing meaty characters in Mirchi, AD and A..Aa, has reportedly walked out of a film starring Samantha citing she was uncomfortable with her role.

Nadhiya was on board to play a key role in Samantha and Vijay Sethupathi starrer Tamil film, ‘Super Deluxe’. As per the reports, the senior actress walked out of the film after shooting for a couple of days as she felt uncomfortable playing the grey character. She reportedly conveyed the same to the makers, asked apology for accepting the film without getting a clear picture of the character offered, and left the film with makers’ permission.

She has been replaced by another powerful veteran actress, Ramya Krishna. The ‘Baahubali’ actress was bold and experimental enough to accept the challenging character that Nadhiya refused to do as she couldn’t imagine herself in a role with grey shades. Ramya Krishna on the other hand has accepted the role without much ado.

Actress Tamannaah Bhatia says she didn’t enjoy any administrative authority in the creative role play in the Telugu version of Kangana Ranaut-starrer “Queen”.

According to a report, National Award-winning director Neelakanta quit the remake of “Queen” over “creative differences” with the actress.

Slamming it as baseless, Tamannaah said in a statement to IANS: “I would like to reiterate and clarify that no actor ever has had a say in the technical process of a film. My team or I didn’t enjoy any administrative authority in the creative role play for the Telugu version of ‘Queen’.”

The final call “always rests with the producer of the film”, she said.

Tamannaah is looking forward to resuming work and completing the final schedule of the film.

“I have great respect for Neelakanta sir and would like to put an end to all these speculative rumours. The producer (Manu Kumaran) had made some changes to the composition of the team in early November to streamline the execution of this extremely ambitious project,” she said.

“The four language simultaneous remakes of ‘Queen’ is a dream project for everyone involved and we all are collectively working towards giving the audience four beautiful and entertaining movies,” she added.

The Kangana Ranaut-starrer Hindi blockbuster is being made in Malayalam, Tamil and Kannada besides Telugu.

“Agnyaathavaasi” brought huge pre-release profits to producer S Radhakrishna and post-release it ended up being the biggest dud.

The producer is now mired in many problems thanks to the movie as he recently paid huge amount to T-series for the copyright issues of “Largo Winch”, based on which Trivikram wrote Agnyaathavaasi.

Now that the film has become a huge dud, both hero Pawan Kalyan and director Trivikram have agreed to repay some of the amount from their remuneration to settle the issue with the distributors.

It is not clear whether they would give money to Radhakrishna upfront or ask him to adjust the same amount in their future collaborations.

If Radhakrishna agrees to give the rights of Trivikram-NTR’s film to the same distributors, would NTR accept?

NTR has taken normal remuneration for the film as he wanted to work with Trivikram at any cost. Now the equations have been changed, will NTR demand more?

The producer, who is a soft-natured person and being one who has never faced such a dud in his career, has a tough time ahead.

Industry buzz is that he has approached Dil Raju and other industry bigwigs to bail him out and settle the issue amicably.

Only good news is that NTR is not putting any pressure either on producer or director Trivikram regarding their next project.

There are many discussions going on in Telugu Film Industry couple of weeks ago that they will be banning the release of dubbed movies when big Telugu films are hitting cinemas. But at the time when Agnyaathavaasi, Jai Simha and Rangula Ratnam are hitting cinemas for Sankranthi, even Surya’s “Gang” found a big release.

In this scenario, with all other straight Telugu films getting a mixed talk, Surya’s Gang survived the box office attack easily. And it is slowly picking up at the box office because audiences are left with no option to get entertained as all other Telugu films out there are not so impressive. And now, some are coming up with an interesting comment about this.

“In case if Telugu films fail to work, then there is no way we could waste box office potential. Tamil dubbed films will help the theatres run, distributors feel happy and audiences entertained. So it is good to have a dubbed film in the race along with straight Telugu films” a person in trade commented. In that case, along with Mahesh Babu’s Bharat Anu Nenu and Allu Arjun’s Naa Peru Surya Naa Illu India movie, Rajnikanth’s “2 Point O” will release for sure.

Already 2 Point O is struggling between dates like April 14th and 27th. It may fix out any date, but that impact will be felt on Mahesh and Bunny’s films as both are targeting just a week before or after those dates. Also with some big distributors losing big with straight Telugu films, they are now said to be demanding 2 Point O release in summer saying that they can’t just believe straight films and bet bigger.

She has been the darling of media ever since word was out about her impending debut. Since then there has been a lot of speculation and much has been written about her debut. While there were a couple of instances of her being signed for a film, it took a while before Jahnavi Kapoor, daughter of yesteryears diva Sridevi and Boney Kapoor finally got shooting.

And it took none other than Bollywood’s ‘godfather’ Karan Johar to get the ball rolling or shall we say, the camera rolling for Sridevi’s little girl.The film was launched amidst much fanfare and when the first look of the film was released, it was said that the industry had found its new beautiful young couple.

But lo and behold, even before one stopped gushing over the cute pairing, comes the news that the star kid can’t act after all.While her dance moves have been well appreciated and got her a lot of young fans already, it is said that Jahnavi is no ‘natural’ like her illustrious mother.

Apparently, things have gone to the point wherein the director of Dhadak, Shashank Khaitan has decided to give the shoot a one-month break so that the lead pair Jahnavi and Ishan can warm up to each other.

Well, probably he hopes Ishan to give Jahnavi a few tips on acting as he has made his debut with Majid Majidi’s Beyond the Clouds.Dhadak is the remake of a Marathi hit Sairat, which is the story of two teenagers fighting for love in a rigid caste system.