Half Yearly Report: Tollywood 2009

It was with great hype and positive anticipation that the year 2009 was looked forward to by the Tollywood fraternity. They were looking at scoring some very good hits by the middle of this year so that they would make up for the setbacks the industry has been facing over the past three to four years.

However, things have not been that great now that the month of June has arrived and the financial reports reveal that it has been a discouraging year so far. On the brighter side, films like ‘Arundhati’ ‘Akasamantha’ and ‘Kick’ have been declared super hits and ‘Arundhati’ came to be the one and only proper blockbuster.

Then came movies like ‘Sasirekha Parinayam’ ‘Maska’ ‘Konchem Ishtam Konchem Kashtam’ which turned out to be average fares at the box office. The offbeat and masala movies like ‘Mental Krishna’, ‘Srisailam’, ‘16 Days’, ‘Nenu Devudni’ could not impress the B and C centre audiences too. Some of the biggest disappointments have been ‘Drona’ with the famous bikini act of Priyamani, Allari Naresh and his much hyped ‘Fitting Master’, Dasari Narayana Rao’s political satire ‘Mesthri’ that bombed miserably at the box office. Then there were movies like Naa girlfriend baaga rich, Manorama which had expectations but could not perform. Even the big banner movies like Billa, Ananda Thandavam, Adhineta, Veedokkade, Mitrudu, Pista having the likes of Nandamuri Balakrishna, Suriya, Vishal, Jagapathi Babu, Tamannah were not able to get any response from the audience. On the B,C banner, there were the regular Rajavari Chepala Cheruvu, Target, Diary, 18,20 Love Story, Sontha Ooru, Bank that scampered without a trace.

Also, the election season and the IPL cricket tournament have been two major reasons why the summer season was not capitalized to the fullest. Now, the summer has passed and the academic year has begun and so have the flood of movies.

Now, there are literally three to four releases each Friday and at the same time, the multiplexes and producers issue at Bollywood also worked in favor of the Tollywood movies. Movies like ‘Diary’ ‘Kavya’s Diary’ ‘Ride’ have been getting a somewhat decent talk and in the pipeline are movies like ‘Current’ ‘Boni’ ‘Evaraina Eppudaina’ that are being presented with a lot of expectations. What kind of impact they will create on the box office is something we would know in just a few days time.

For now, the message is clear that the audience wants to see nice story oriented movies and though crores are spent on the presentation, if there is no content, then the film is sure to fail. On the other hand, even if budgets are low and storyline is good then nothing can stop it from making it big at the box office.

Let us hope the second half works on those lines and makes up for the setbacks in the first half.


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