Remakes made by star directors/heroes used to have a good success rate in Telugu cinema. 'Shankardada MBBS', 'Tagore' and the many remakes that Pawan Kalyan acted in are good examples.
Even in the last decade, 'Gabbar Singh' and 'Drushyam' proved to be highly watchable remakes. 'Premam', remade with Naga Chaitanya and Shruti Haasan, was trolled by purists but it did make money at the box office.
Ram Charan's 'Dhruva' and Nagarjuna-Karthi's 'Oopiri' were also BO hits. The former was directed by Surender Reddy and the latter by Vamsi Paidipally. Ravi Teja's 'Krack' had many scenes that were copied from a Tamil movie. Harish Shankar's 'Gaddalakonda Ganesh' worked for most audiences, although it was a mockery of 'Jigarthanda' (Tamil). 'Vakeel Saab' was a hit in 2021.
Vishwak Sen made 'Falaknuma Das' with decent enough awareness about the importance of atmospherics, nativity and characterizations.
However, in the new decade, the narrative is changing. The disastrous failure of Megastar Chiranjeevi's 'Bholaa Shankar' last year and Ravi Teja's 'Mr. Bachchan' this year is proving that our directors are losing the remake game. This is not new. Pawan Kalyan's 'Theen Maar' was unbearable. Ram Charan's 'Thoofan' was a dud.
