The hottest topic of discussion in Kollywood is Sun Pictures snapping up Rajinikanth’s mega budget Shankar extravaganza Yantram — The Robot, from Ayngaran International (AI), who, a few months back, launched it in a big way.
The grapevine has it that the deal has been firmed up between the Rajinikanth-Shankar combo and Sun Pictures for a whopping Rs 165 crore, on a first copy basis.
All that Kalanidhi Maran, chairman and managing director of Sun TV Network Limited was willing to say was, “This is a big moment for Sun Pictures as we feel this is going to be India’s biggest movie. We are very happy and proud to be associated with Superstar Rajinikanth, Shankar and A R Rahman.”
Sources close to AI say the company is relieved that it is out of the project, which according to them “does not make any business sense”.
The buzz is that Shankar and Karunamoorthy of AI have parted ways over the budget of Endhiran, which was originally pegged at Rs 120 crore.
After the meltdown and global recession, the Kishore Lulla-owned Eros International, which has a stake in AI, wanted Shankar to scale down the budget.
However, sources claim Shankar was in no mood to comply. As per sources close to the production, for shooting two songs in North America, Peru and other foreign locations and some scenes in Goa, AI shelled out a whopping Rs 30 crore!
Shankar and key members of his unit travelled in style in first class, first on a recce to spot locations and then for the actual shoot. They stayed at luxury resorts and took helicopters from the US for the aerial shots for the songs. Also, sources claim they hired top technicians from Hollywood with salaries on par with what they would get for an English film!
And for an action scene to be shot in Goa, the producers were forced to buy, on the insistence of the director, three brand new luxury cars — a Mercedes, BMW and an Audi, costing nearly Rs 3 crore, when they could have hired it! And the brand new Merc was blown up for an action scene, when they could have used a dummy! It was at this stage that AI decided that enough was enough and wanted to wriggle out of the project.
A source says, “They literally blew up a fortune — nearly Rs 30 crore and hardly 25 percent of the film was over. Remember? Rajinikanth’s biggest blockbuster of all times, Chandramukhi, was made on a budget including prints for Rs 30 crore, which went on to collect between Rs 80 and 100 crore from theatricals and all other rights. In the international market, a Rajinikanth film has the potential to generate a sum of $3 to $3.5 million, roughly about Rs 15 crore, while an SRK or Aamir Khan superhit film can make anywhere between Rs 40 and Rs 50 crore.”
Meanwhile, Kishore Lulla of Eros International has been going through difficult times as his big budget Bollywood films like Drona and Yuvvraaj have bombed.
In a recent interview, Lulla was quoted as saying, “With the liquidity crunch in the market, people now have less disposable income and so, they will now spend less on luxury and entertainment. This means the movie-going clientele will decrease and so will the box-office collections.”
And the underlining factor that the parent company Eros was stressing was that Kollywood is hardly 30 percent of Bollywood in the international market. Karunamoorthy was clearly told that, this was no time for any kind of bravado.
But Maran and his team do not want to talk about the past. Instead, they are looking at the future.
They feel Yantram has the potential to be a blockbuster and from Tamil Nadu alone, it may gross a bulk of its production cost.
Added to that, Sun DTH’s foray into north India has been a marketing success and Endhiran’s Hindi version, when it releases next year, can piggyback on it.
Shankar put it succinctly, “I am proud to join hands with Kalanidhi Maran. Working with superstar Rajinikanth is a pleasure.”
