Nagarjuna and Veteran director Raghavender Rao who churned out devotional classics like Annamaya, Shri Ramadasu and Shirdi Sai are teaming up for the fourth venture. This time it is going to be the story of Lord Venkateswara titled Om Namo Venkatesaya.

The script work for the film is almost complete. Nagarjuna is planning to begin this new project in February next year after completing his current projects – Soggade Chinni Nayana and Oopiri – Bilingual film with Karthi.

MM Keeravani who scored excellent music for all the previous devotional films is also composing music for this film. A.Mahesh Reddy who produced Nagarjuna’s Shirdi Sai may also produce this film under his AMR Sai Krupa Entertainments banner. More details of this project later.

Director Sukumar who was down and out with the failure of 1-Nenokkadine seems to have hit back with Kumari 21F. Thanks to Kumari 21F, the director-writer is back in reckoning with both the audiences and industry people. He received calls from all the big stars in the industry on his success and NTR even threw a special party for him. Sukumar was worrying the image of ‘flop director’ all these days though he was busy shooting NTR’s Nannaku Prematho.

He desperately wanted this movie to be successful or his creative ideas would be questioned by one and all. Thanks to this success, he is now set to commence the new schedule of Nannaku Prematho with renewed energy. On the other hand, he is also planning to announce another movie on his banner introducing one of his close friends as director.

NEW DELHI: Actor Aamir Khan today joined the debate on the growing ‘intolerance’ and said he has been “alarmed” by a number of incidents, and that his wife Kiran Rao even suggested that they should probably leave the country. “As an individual, as part of this country as a citizen, we read in the papers what is happening, we see it on the news and certainly, I have been alarmed. I can’t deny. I have been alarmed by a number of incidents,” Mr Khan said while speaking at the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards. The 50-year-old actor said he also feels that the sense of fear and insecurity has been growing.

“When I chat with Kiran at home, she says, ‘Should we move out of India?’ That’s a disastrous and big statement for Kiran to make. She fears for her child. She fears what the atmosphere around us will be. She feels scared to open the newspapers every day,” he said. “That does indicate that there is this sense of growing disquiet, there is growing despondency apart from alarm.” Underscoring the importance of the stance taken by political leaders, Mr Khan said, “People who are our elected representatives, state or centre… we look upon these people to take a strong stance, to make a strong statement, speed up the legal process”. The sense of insecurity grows “when we don’t see that happening,” he added.

Mr Khan endorsed the move by scientists, writers and filmmakers, who had come under fire from a section for returning their awards to register their protest. For creative people, it is important to voice what they feel, he said. Asked if he endorsed the protests by the people, Mr Khan said he would as long as it was non-violent, as “all individuals have a right to protest and they can protest in any manner that they feel is right as long as they are not taking the law into their hands.”

Back to back flops have hit hero Ram very harder. Including the failure of his latest film Sivam, he has to save a blockbuster in his credit very soon. Instead of that saving, guess what our hero is doing.

Currently this young dynamic hero has become saviour for couple of director if reports are anything to go by. Director Santosh Srinivas (Rabhasa fame) has earlier delivered stupendous hit with Kandireega, which happens to be his debut film.

Post the failure of Jr NTR’s movie, this director is sitting idle and we hear he got a chance to direct Ram again. Tentatively titled ‘Tikkaregithey’, this film will be launched on Sankranthi eve if all goes well.

At the same time, Ram is also mulling over the idea of working with Sreenu Vytla yet again. This due have earlier delivered super hit ‘Ready’, but never worked again. Disastrous Aagadu and disappointing Bruce Lee haven’t given Vytla much big choices than ‘saviour’ Ram.

Superstar Rajinikanth’s next film, Kabali is nearing the completion of its shoot. The movie unit recently completed a major schedule in Malaysia. The last schedule of the movie will kick-start in Chennai from December first week. The makers are planning to release the movie for Pongal 2016.

Radhika Apte is the female lead in the film. Rajinikanth will be seen in the role of an aging gangster in the movie. Ranjith Pa is wielding megaphone for the movie. The film is likely to hit the screens in April next year.

Santosh Narayanan will compose tunes for the movie which will be produced by Kailaipuli S Thanu. Superstar Rajinikanth is just like a wounded lion after that back to back failures with Kochadaiiyaan and Linga.

The actor is raring to go. After the completion of Kabali, Rajinikanth will begin the shooting of Robot-2 in the direction of Shankar. The movie is likely to have its launch on Rajinikanth’s Birthday.

Anushka is back and is promoting her upcoming release Size Zero right now. Though the promotions were started a couple of months back, it had to be postponed to make way for Rudramadevi. Now, the latest buzz in Film Nagar is that Anushka has done Size Zero to compensate the heavy losses the producers incurred after making big budget films like Varna, which had Anushka and Arya in the lead.

The movie was a disaster both in Telugu and Tamil and the production company PVP Cinema had a fallout with its director, Sri Raghava. But Anushka and Arya reportedly agreed to do another movie for the same company as compensation, say sources. PVP wanted the movie to release much before Rudhramadevi but Anushka didn’t accept his plan and opposed his strategy saying she will not promote the film, unless they made way for Rudramadevi. The reason why they obliged is because she did a film for them in return says a source from PVP’s production house.

The dream project of star director Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Bajirao Mastani, a warrior’s love story based on life of 1700’s Maratha Peshwa (Prime Minister) Bajiroa and his second wife Masthani has been in continuous strife of late. First a open letter to Bhansali from one of Bajirao’s descendants about the flaws in ‘Pinga ga Pori’ song was in news.

The letter stated that it was misleading the history and that Nauvari saree of the royals is never worn the way Deepika or Priyanka have wore it (Skin show) in the Song and that Kashi Bhai never danced nor could dance as she was effected with Tuberculosis. Latest on the list is ‘Ban the Movie Bajirao Mathani’ page on Facebook being hosted by historians complaining that Bajirao Masthani is a Jinxed story and not based on facts.

This page already has 1800+ likes and is asking for more people to support the page and help them force the ban. The page description reads ‘This movie is purely insulting the glorious History of Shri Bajirao Peshwa. Lets not forget his valor. Lets work together to halt misrepresentation. ‘ it’s fast gaining popularity on facebook turning a headache to Bhansali Sahab. The movie is slated for release on 18 December.

Akhil overseas distribution rights were bought for four crore by the buyers that expected the film to be a huge blockbuster. Akhil turned out to be a nightmare to them on many levels. The film was released in more than 120 screens across US but it only managed to collect around 170K dollars. Distributors have spent so much on the publicity and theater rents that they had to pay additional amount to that of gross collected from the theaters. The expenditure on the movie publicity and theater rents cost extra 10 lakhs more than the share collected at the box office. This means Akhil distributor’s share in overseas is minus 10 lakh rupees!

This will go down as epic disaster for not even collecting single NP share from the box office in spite of the buyers bet of 4 crore on it! Akhil has turned out to be disastrous for every buyer that invested in it. Overseas buyers were left shell shocked with its performance and it is believed that Nagarjuna gave assurance to them by offering his next movies for fairly less amount than the market price.