Producers go easy about COVID

The 2021 Sankranti season has given a lot of cheer and joy for the Telugu film industry to bounce back in full zest. The flurry of release date announcements over the past week confirms us that producers and directors are confident about audiences returning to theatres in impressive numbers. The film calendar for the year already looks jam-packed and film lovers are in for a treat in the coming months with a wide variety of films, both big and small.

For the industry, the pandemic is officially done and dusted, not only in terms of releases but also with safety regulations on the sets. Most cast and crew part of films with reputed banners (Dil Raju, Allu Aravind to name a few) say that the production staff are no longer conducting COVID-19 tests regularly and many of them are hardly seen wearing masks even during scene-breaks.

COVID cases have drastically decreased in the last few months and the sets are buzzing with similar enthusiasm like in the pre-pandemic era. “Only the lead actors and those who have combination scenes with them are made to undergo tests. It isn’t practical for every member on the set to be tested and there’s no guarantee that the person concerned wouldn’t come in contact with an infected person.  The rollout of the vaccine has given confidence for the industry to function normally,” an actor shares anonymously. While it’s good to see Tollywood is no longer paranoid about COVID, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Isn’t it?