Of course, the favourite destination surely remains Jalsa with almost all the 1000 guests checking in from the ‘best Diwali party venues’ in Bollywood.Some like Preity and Big B himself posted pictures on social media and as always, the guests are ga ga over the festivities and the hospitality of Bachchan household.

A little away from Mumbai, at the beach-side holiday place Alibaug, King Khan Shah Rukh hosted his Diwali bash. Well, he was surely not trying to run away from Bachchan’s Jalsa, but he had his own glitzy and glam do at his sprawling new bungalow, which also doubled as Gouri and Shah Rukh’s house-warming party.

The house spread over 8 acres is a real beauty say those who were invited to the party and the interiors were done by the lady of the house herself, Gouri Khan. Well, those who attended included Shah Rukh’s close circle of friends. And it is said that he also resolved the CRZ issue, which ensured that King Khan had his bash and mithai too.

Usually, top heroes try to launch their sons when they are at the peak of their careers. And it is the case with all industries.Since most of them grow up in the same atmosphere, the children too aspire to get into the same line and also because films become their world and also means of bread and butter.

So, heroes try to sometimes soft launch their sons and sometimes try to go all out to make commercial success out of them. While in most cases, they walk off with average hits, some times, the films hit the bull’s eye and become big hits. In case of Nagarjuna, he launched his elder son with Josh. The film did not do well commercially.

And years later, he once again planned the launch of his second son Akhil. However, this time, he planned a big film. However, the film has had bad box office collections so far and talk is not very positive. So, despite his best intentions, Nagarjuna has failed to find good scripts for his son so that they could have dream launches. Well, as they say, there is always the next time.

Venkatesh has had a special year in his long career. Well, in the entire year, he hasn’t done any shooting, and he hasn’t had any releases.After Gopala Gopala, he hasn’t had a release and neither did he shoot for any film. In fact, once films started becoming less, Venkatesh declared that he was open to do multi-starrers. Accordingly, he did Masala with Ram, SVSC with Mahesh and Gopala Gopala with Pawan Kalyan.

Fact is that while he has been listening to stories, nothing got finalised. Then there were rumours that he would be doing the remake of a Hindi film and it was said that he would be doing the remake of a Malayalam film. But both the film did not happen.

Meanwhile, he almost started shooting for Radha and the film got stalled back then. Now, once again, he has finalised Radha that will be directed by Maruthi. And this time around, talk is that the film will happen for sure.

At the moment, all attention is towards Jr NTR’s up next film with blockbuster director Koratala Siva who delivered two superhits Mirchi, Srimanthudu in a row. While producers (Mythri Movie Makers) are making preparations to roll on the film from January after Tarak’s Nannaku Prematho hits the screens, however what’s stopping them is heroines. They’re yet to zero in on lead ladies opposite NTR.

Although several names did rounds earlier, nothing seems to have materialised so far. The likes of Parineeti, Shraddha Kapoor were heard but latest is that they’d not be part of the film. While it’s buzzed that NTR is recommending Shruti Haasan’s name strongly, makers have kept options open as Samantha’s name is also heard. Everything is ready except the heroine. So, producers Ravi, Naveen, CVM are scouting for good actress opposite Tarak.

Titled as Janatha Garage with a tagline ‘Ikkada Anni Repair Cheyabadunu’ ( translated as ‘All Are Repaired Here’), the film is billed to be an out-and-out mass film tailor-made for fans. Given that Koratala shown Prabhas in a new role in Mirchi, it’s expected that he’d show NTR too in different avatar.

Lakshmi Ganapathi Films banner is one film banner whose name is synonymous with several prominent dubbing films. And its producer B Subramanyam is well-known in film circles in Telugu, Tamil. Though Subramanyam ventured into making of straight films with Siddharth-Hansika’s Something Something, the film failed to rake in moolah in Telugu while it was an average grosser in Tamil. After this, Subramanyam decided to go slow on straight films and wanted to continue his stint in dubbing films.

But destiny has different plans. One big dubbing flick has changed the fate of the production house. It’s none other than Rajinikanth’s Kochadaiyaan. Directed by Rajini’s daughter Soundarya Ashwin, the film which released after several delays tanked without a trace. Lakshmi Ganapathi Films, which had acquired the Telugu theatrical rights of Superstar Rajinikanth’s film for a whopping price, has been struggling to recover from the losses. Apparently, Rs 12 Crore of him are stuck with the producers of original Kochadaiyaan and still haven’t come yet.

Since nearly Rs 12 Crore is blocked, Subramanyam decided to not to produce films till he recover his amounts. While Subramanyam is sure that he’d get money, but he is not sure when he would get that. It’s a strange, ironical situation in film industry. Due to Superstar Rajini, a big production house like Lakshmi Ganapathi Films has become jobless. It’s high time, Superstar Rajini should step into the issue and see to it that justice is delivered.

Indians make the largest number of films only after Hollywood. And we also make the largest amount of money from films apart from Hollywood. Films are the favourite entertainment of average Indians and so is the case with Telugu audiences.Festivals, weekends or any special holiday, one chunk of the day is allotted to watching the blockbuster of the season. Of course, some love to watch them time and again, but again, with television, that section of audience has surely come down. But again, technology per se has surely changed the dynamics of movie-watching on the Indian sub-continent. There was a time, during good old times, as some seasoned reviewers would put it, when films were distributed in aluminium cans, flat boxes that were carried from theatre to theatre.

Films would be screened four times a day and a hit or a blockbuster film would run for 100 days. So, there would be a golden jubilee, silver jubilee and diamond jubilee function for every hit and it would be an event where the stars came down. As for the 2-tier and 3-tier centres, by the time the film reached them, the prints would turn grainy, they would already get the reviews from their friends or family in cities and the film would have already completed its total run in main centres. So this was the second-rung of business.

Now, the times are totally different. Take for example, the latest release Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, Salman starrer made by Rajshri Films, who charmed an entire generation of Indian girls with Prem, their hero. This time, Prem did not get the best of review, but he did once again manage to make maximum money, in shortest period of time. Where a film would run in maximum of 50 centres in the past, now, a blockbuster is screened in over 5600 screens all over the world, as was the case with PRDP. The pre-release hype, business tie-ups, promotional tie-ups ensure that the makers make the most money prior to the film’s release.

And once the film releases, it makes money on the very first day thanks to all the hype and hoopla the marketing division already creates. So, strategically, Diwali, Eid weekends are chosen for big films and all money is made during that long holiday period. Let’s take the case of Salman’s film and make a simple calculation. If 200 viewers watched the film on the screen paying Rs 100 per ticket on an average, then the film would make Rs 45 crores in a day, adding up all 5600 screens. And the film did make Rs 40 crores on day 1. However, the bottomline is that the film has to manage 5000 screens and also have a star like Salman in the lead, who has a wide following across the world. Now, let’s consider the case of Baabhubali or even Srimanthudu, two landmark hits in the history of Telugu cinema.

Baahubali is, what one can safely call a marketing success, wherein, all the pre-release publicity helped the film to make Rs 650 crores in all. However, its run time in theatres was barely for 50 days. Similarly, Srimanthudu that took home Rs 100 crores also barely managed to breach the 50 day mark. So while the business is increasing by the day and the numbers are getting bigger, thanks to the Indian diaspora spread across the world and growing indulgence in entertainment, films are making big money. Of course, the catchword here is an appealing story and top stars to sell it. If that falls into place along with the marketing strategy, then it is a given that the film will make huge monies.

Of course, piracy happened in the past, and it happens now. But the digital screening of films via satellite and servers, beaming them across main centres alongside B,C centers has become easy and encrypted copies have made it ‘nearly’ impossible to download films for piracy. This too has helped boost collections as many people love to watch the films during the opening weekends, instead of watching them after all the reviews are out. Given the role of technology in Indian film industry today, let’s make another quick calculation, now, if 5000 screens can promise Rs 40 crores in a day, imagine if the same film is splashed across 50 million plus screens? Of course, on your very own HD television screens… And that would throw open the hitherto unexplored market of pay-per-view telecast on television. Remember, Kamal Haasan had wanted to release his film online? That is just a baby step for days ahead. Indeed apart from stars and innovative story, films will be all about good marketing and good technology in the days to come.

Producer Bandla Ganesh who has made lot of buzz by making back to back movies with big stars like Pawan, NTR, Allu Arjun and Ram Charan ran into losses within no time.He has struggled a lot during Govindudu Andarivadele that Charan had to bail him out to ensure a smooth release. As per grapevine the producer is in huge financial crisis that he immediately needs to do movies with some of the superstars. After trying his best to convince Mahesh Babu to do a film under his banner and running after Ram Charan for months, Ganesh finally lost hopes on them.

Mahesh is currently doing movies for big banners and will not be available until three years. Ram Charan too is focusing on having an able producer on the sets to see everything is done right. He is not willing to gamble in the near future after Bruce Lee’s result. Bandla terms with NTR are not good. Same is the case with Pawan Kalyan. So Bandla Ganesh is now looking at the next set of heroes to keep himself busy.

He is planning to make a movie with Nithin says the buzz. Nithin is currently busy with Trivikram’s A Aa. Bandla hopes that this film would put Nithin into the big league so that his next film will generate lot of craze. He has given advance to Nithin and locked the dates. Director is not yet finalized but Bandla Ganesh is chasing all the frontline directors with attractive offers.