01 November 2024
Hyderabad

The cat is out of the bag finally. After months of speculation, production house Sri Venkateswara Creations on Friday announced that its next with victory Venkatesh and Anil Ravipudi will indeed be arriving in cinemas this Sankranti. It has been in the making with the title Sankranthiki Vasthunnam ever since it went to floors but the makers were always shy of announcing it officially because with their other production, Game Changer, also lined up for the festival, they were caught in a catch-22 situation. Sources say if they were not making it to Sankranti, Ravipudi had thought of a couple of other titles as well.

With Dil Raju investing a lot of time and spending a bomb on Ram Charan-fronted Game Changer, which marks celebrated Tamil director Shankar’s first Telugu movie, he would’ve ideally wanted to give it a mammoth release this festival and make as much as he can within the first few days of its release. Any chance of giving theatres to other releases means there will be a dent in the revenue of Game Changer but it seems he has chalked out a perfect strategy to balance both Game Changer and Sankranthiki Vasthunnam (there will be a gap between both the releases). The fact that both films belong to different genres helps his cause further.

Incidentally, this would be the second time in the last two years a leading production house’s two films will be releasing for the festival; Mythri Movie Makers gambled with Waltair Veerayya and Veera Simha Reddy in 2023 and it paid off for them, with both the films earning handsomely.

This time around though, the situation will be a little different for Raju. Being a regular distributor for Haarika & Hassine Creations means he will be given the mantle of distributing Nandamuri Balakrishna-starrer #NBK109 as well. It will be a big headache for him and his partner Sirish but a nice one to have it. Trust them to sail through it given their enormous experience in the industry. At the same time, there are other titles like Majaka, starring Sundeep Kishan, and Garudan Telugu remake, featuring Bellamkonda Sreenivas, Manchu Manoj and Nara Rohith, looking to grab the audience's attention at this festival. So all in all, it will be Dil Raju’s Sankranti this time around and hopefully with small titles like Majaka and Garudan remake in the fray, he will be wary of the competition as well. The last time he took a small film lightly; it reaped great profits, attaining fame in the national arena too. Rings a bell?