A Glimpse on 2012 Pongal Releases

 It was quantity not quality war for some time now in Tollywood. The number of prints and number of theatres became the measure to decide fate of any new film, which is decided just after the first show - if you go by the trend. This Sankranti is heading for a real feast with a good number of pictures of top stars and banners coming up with high number of prints and more number of theatres like nothing before.

From the very first shot itself, ‘Businessman’ has been in news and as if to remind the director and lead actor of the deadline. With ‘Dookudu’ ending the drought of successful straight films, ‘Businessman’ pot was kept boiling up to audio and beyond till the release. Mahesh-Puri combination is back for Pongal. Whether they recreate ‘Pokiri’ magic will be known in a couple of week’s time. 

Venkatesh, who is slowly switching to mature roles with his home production promoting Rana for younger roles, is appearing as ‘Bodyguard,’ the remake of a Malayalam film of the same name. The Tamil and Hindi versions being superb hits, Venkatesh playing the title role with Trisha in this romantic action movie is obviously so confident of bagging big success. Venkatesh played the role of Police Commissioner in ‘Eenadu,’ a remake of ‘A Wednesday’ and was not very convincing, though he was good in patches.  

Next to come is Raviteja with his unique and rustic style looks good to a section of audience. He is coming with ‘Nippu’ in Sankranti chill. The film is in post production stage and buzz is that it will catch up with festive deadline. The film has Rajendra Prasad, Brahmanandam and others in cast with SS Thaman scoring the music and Gunasekhar directing the film produced by YVS Chowdary. 

Sunil has graduated from comedian to a hero. Now he is coming as ‘Poola Rangadu’ where in Isha Chawla is playing female lead. The film which began in August is almost complete. Veerabhadram Chowdary is directing the film produced by Atchi Reddy.

With lot of uncertainty and a number of equations working in tandem nothing is certain in Tollywood for these big guns. Some more films may be added to the list or one or two may be rescheduled or dropped even. Anyway, wish that this festival will have for sure a good fare.