Telugu Cinema

In the Telugu filmdom, the first six months have not been favourable.

Om Deepak of AndhraBoxOffice, a popular box office portal, said: 'As usual, commercial entertainers have dominated and raked in decent box office numbers. But when compared to the first half of 2014, there's a dip in overall collections by minimum 20 percent due to a fewer big releases.'

The delay of big-budget movies such as Baahubali, Kick 2, Rudhramadevi and Srimanthudu, which were originally slated for summer release, has also impacted the numbers.

'Generally, summer will witness release of at least three big films. This year, the only notable big release was Allu Arjun's S/O Satyamurthy. As a result, the box office occupancy has been lowest this summer in this decade,' Deepak said.

Kalyan Ram's Pataas, with a worldwide gross of Rs.29 crore, is the most profitable film and a blockbuster in every sense. Junior NTR's Temper (Rs.74 crore) and Sundeep Kishan-starrer Beeruva (Rs.10 crore) were hits with minor profits.

Amongst high grossing films which suffered minor losses, S/O Satyamurthy leads with Rs.90 crore, followed by Gopala Gopala (Rs. 66 crore) and Pandaga Chesko (Rs.29 crore).

Telugu filmdom also saw a bevy of Tamil dubbed releases. Out of them, the only profitable venture was Ganga (Rs.31 crore). Though the Telugu version of Shankar's I grossed Rs. 44 crore, the film was a disaster.

'It was a poor first half for Telugu industry, which had approximately 54 releases. Expectations are sky-high on Baahubali and Srimanthudu, and the success of these films is very essential for the industry, especially after the bad start,' Trinath said.

In picture: Pataas

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