August month has been very exciting for Tollywood in terms of revenue and global domination because of Saaho. Amidst roaring expectations on Saaho it tumbled badly at the box office but small films like Rakashasudu and Evaru impressed the audience quite a lot.
RAKSHASUDU – It’s been many years a Psycho thriller genre has been made in India which is very intense and successful until Tamil Blockbuster Ratsasan released, filled that space and even set an example for the genre. Bellamkonda Srinivas starred in the Telugu remake of this film titled Rakshasudu. Director Ramesh Varma did not even experiment a bit with script and narration of original which is actually a good move to score Hit. Ghibran’s background score gives chills. Theatrical rights of this film sold out for 16 Cr and collected 13.51 Cr share making it must watch and average at box-office according to collections.
MANMADHUDU 2 – Senior Star like Nagarjuna gave a chance to one time Hit Director Rahul Ravindran who did a terrible job in handling a remake script even with all the striking cast and crew. Samantha and Keerthy Suresh cameos were wasted. Except for Nagarjuna’s super stylish looks and production values, there is nothing to watch in the film. Director has been extremely criticized for spoiling the sequel of cult classic Manmadhudu. With 18.40 Cr theatrical business film closed to 9.60 Cr share making it a double disaster.
EVARU – Inspired from Spanish film The invisible guest Adivi Sesh pitched the storyline and made it in Telugu with title Evaru which is a Crime Thriller directed by Venkat Ramji starring Regina Cassandra, Naveen Chandra along with Sesh in lead roles. From start to end, Story and screenplay make you glued to the screen. Brilliant performances from lead cast lifted up the thrilling elements even more. Positive word of mouth and reviews brought 9.75 Cr closing money while theatrical rights sold out for 10 Cr.
RANARANGAM – No matter how good the first half is second half has to impress the audience for a film to be successful. Sharwanand’s Ranarangam is quite an example of this. Gangster drama needs to be exciting and competitive in every scene but the director made it bland and boring with engaging conflict. Kajal Aggarwal was not given scope in performance making one wonder why she accepted the role. With negative word of mouth, it collected 8.60 Cr share making distributors lose half of the amount as Theatrical rights were sold out for 16 Cr.
SAAHO – Remember the storm it created before release. Teaser, Trailer everything set a record in itself and also a special Twitter emoji is created. Though it’s purely a regional language project it crossed boundaries and set a name as Indian action thriller only because of Prabhas’s immense recognition worldwide as Baahubali. Shraddha Kapoor’s addition made it stronger even more. As usual for a pan India Star this film made a terrific theatrical rights business of 290 Cr but after the release unanimously tumbled at the box office collecting 217 Cr closing share making it box-office flop.