The Pushpa Myth Explodes, South Films Do Miserable Business In Hindi

The classic  Pushpa may  hate tears(as Rajesh Khanna’s iconic dialogue  in Amar Prem  suggests). But the  modernday  Pushpa laughed all the way to the  bank. The Telugu film of that title raked  in the moolah as  if there was  no  tomorrow even in its dubbed  Hindi avatar.

Suffering from a serious  Bollywood malady called the the herd mentality ,a slew  of Southern  superstars have  lined up their films for release  in dubbed  Hindi  avatars.

However  the Hindi market has not welcomed  the post-Pushpa South Indian  releases .Two major South Indian releases  in the last two weeks  Khiladi in Telugu featuring superstar Ravi Teja  and Valimai in Tamil featuring the iconic Ajith, have crashed  woefully  in their  dubbed Hindi versions.

Both the  films have done roaring business in their  home states  but recorded abysmal collections in  Hindi. According to  boxoffice figures available  to  this writer  from a multiplex chain, the collection for the dubbed  Hindi version of Valimai on the day of release were  as low as Rs 25 lakhs, while Khiladi was  even lower.

What went wrong? According  to Maharashtra’s leading  film exhibitor  Akshay Rathi,  “Those films have not done well because the  North Indian audiences’ awareness  about those film was  not significant. Any South Indian  film whether in Tamil Telugu Malayalam or  Kannada, need to hit the Hindi belt after  bigtime promotions. Today  a   lot of these South Indian stars  have a pan-India  audience. However  it is still  imperative that they come  accompanied by  a significant amount of publicity.”

 Says producer  and trade  analyst  Girish Johar, “The Hindi audiences connected with the story line and characters of Pushpa. It was very desi heartland for them. Whereas other films, which have released recently, are  very regular stuff for Hindi audiences.Also there is a constant flow of Bollywood  releases, so the options are wide and  first preference obviously goes to the local native language.”

 All eyes are now  on Prabhas’  hugely expensive love story Radhe Shyam a Telugu film that will get a  massive  release  in Hindi on  11 March. If that fails  to work—and Prabhas’s previous  film Saaho was  a dud in  Hindi– the dubbed South Indian films in Hindi are  in trouble.