The Rajnikanth-Aishwarya Rai starrer Sci-fi movie Robot, billed as the most expensive Indian film ever made, is expected to storm theatres across the world when it premieres on October 1, but in Andhra Pradesh, it seems to have run into rough weather.
Telugu film producers, who fear that such multi-lingual films would hamper the local film industry, have called for imposition of restrictions on the number of prints of dubbed films like Robot in the state.
The expectations of Robot, directed by Shankar, doing well in the box office are so high that the dubbing rights for the Telugu version were bought for a whopping Rs 27 crore by a maize merchant from coastal Andhra, Thota Kanna Rao. The movie will also be released in Tamil and Hindi simultaneously.
The Telugu version is being released with a record 500 prints, which has triggered apprehensions among local producers who believe that such an invasion of dubbed films would adversely affect the original Telugu movies.
If dubbed films were allowed to swarm the market with such a large number of prints, there would be no theatre left for screening original Telugu films, they said, after discussing the issue at a meeting of Telugu Film Producers Council (TFPC).
Demanding a cap of 50 prints to be fixed for films dubbed from other languages, the producers argue that this would prevent local films from being gobbled up by dubbed movies. Similar restrictions should also be put in place for screening of Hollywood films which are quite popular among the cine-goers in Andhra.
Another fear that the Telugu film industry has is that there are a couple of big budget Telugu movies awaiting release in October, including Mahesh Babu-starrer Khaleja and Junior NTR's Brindavanam, both with budgets touching Rs 40 crore. The release of Robot, they believe, could have an adverse impact on the box office collections of these big budget films.
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