Haathi Mere Saathi: Doomed By Length ?

Rana Daggubati’s dream project Haathi Mere Saathi in  three languages has  run into  heavy weather  , and not just because   of the Covid situation. It seems  the decision to release  the Tamil and Telugu versions of the film(entitled  Kaadan in Tamil, Aranya in Telugu) before the Hindi version, has  spelt doom for  the project.

The  Tamil and Telugu versions of Haathi Mere Saathi, released on March 26, have  flopped miserably. And  the  main factor going against  the  project was  its inordinate  length.  With  a  running time  150  minutes, no one  had the patience  to sit through the  long film during these times  of a pandemic .

Apparently there were  huge  arguments over the  film’s length between  the  director and  producer.

A very angry members  of  the cast spills the beans, “Our director Prabhu Solomon had a  good  idea  in mind. We all loved  doing the film as it  shows how Man mis-uses Nature. But   the final film  turned  out to  be more than three hours long.We convinced him to cut  it by half an hour.  But  no more.”

We now  hear the Hindi version will be released with a further cut of 30 minutes bringing it  down to  a  reasonable  2  hours  of playing time.One thing  is  for sure. The days  of  self-indulgent  filmmakers are  over.