'Bholaa Shankar' has tanked. Trade analysts peg that the film won't earn a share of even Rs 30 Cr at the worldwide box office by the end of its theatrical run. The remake is a bigger failure than 'Acharya'.
Sections of the media and lots of fans are advising Megastar Chiranjeevi to steer clear of the 'Bhajana Batch'. This is a sly reference to the likes of Meher Ramesh himself.
Since the time he made a comeback to cinema, Chiru has done three remakes. Precisely, 50% of the movies he has done in his second innings as an actor are remakes. There must really be a scarcity of stories for Chiru to desperately rely on Tamil and Malayalam movies. 'Kaththi' (remade as 'Khaidi No. 150') and 'Lucifer' (remade as 'Godfather') were good choices, although the latter didn't work commercially.
Critics and well-wishers advise Chiru to team up with new-age directors like Vivek Athreya and Tharun Bhascker. In the Tamil film industry, Rajinikanth has done movies with Karthik Subbaraju ('Petta') and Nelson ('Jailer'). Why can't Chiru do the same, well-wishers are asking.
This advice makes the immature assumption that Athreya and Bhascker and other younger directors have got excellent stories. Maybe, they don't have stories for Chiru.
In Tamil, if Nelson and other relatively new directors are doing films with Rajinikanth, that's because there are no major action stars other than Vijay and Ajith in Kollywood. In Telugu, there is no dearth of action heroes. Prabhas, Allu Arjun, Ram Charan, Jr NTR and Mahesh Babu are competing in the marketplace of stories. Chiru faces stiff competition here, unlike Rajini.
If we didn't have these many action heroes, perhaps, the likes of Trivikram and Sukumar would be doing films with Chiru today.
