How the success of one movie can elevate the fortunes of many others in the pipeline! With the dubbed Hindi version of Pushpa: The Rise emerging as a box-office success, anticipation is building around how pan-Indian audiences will receive other South movies that are arriving pretty much back-to-back in January and February.
While RRR and Radhe Shyam are the two big releases that will anyway find audiences for themselves, it is the prospects of Major and Vikrant Rona that have risen further after the success of Pushpa. Let’s talk about these movies first.
Both Major (Telugu) and Vikrant Rona (Kannada) have been made as pan-India films, with releases planned in multiple languages including Hindi.
Major is based on the life of Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan who lost his life during the Mumbai attacks of 26/11. The film has been made in Telugu as well as Hindi; and it might bring leading man Adivi Sesh closer to Hindi audiences. The actor has impressed pan-Indian audience who have already seen him in the dubbed or subtitled versions of Goodachari and Evaru.
Kichcha Sudeep (the lead in Vikrant Rona) has actually done quite a few Hindi films over the last decade, along side being quite prominent in films made in Kannada as well as other South Indian languages. His last major Bollywood outing was in Salman Khan led Dabangg 3, in which he was the main villain. He also featured opposite Amitabh Bachchan in Ram Gopal Varma’s Rann, and is perhaps best known to pan-Indian audience as the main villain in S.S. Rajamouli’s Makkhi (dubbed version of Eega).
Now as the solo lead of Vikrant Rona with Jacqueline Fernandez as the leading lady, Sudeep would be featuring as a vigilante in a part-real-part-fantasy world that abounds with special effects and will also be released in 3D.
Radhe Shyam and RRR will release even before these film. Radhe Shyam has Prabhas returning to the big screen post Saaho, which incidentally did better business in Hindi than in Telugu. It took a very good initial and then went on to go past the Rs150 crore mark. To put things in perspective, the only other South films to have surpassed this score are Baahubali: The Conclusion (also with Prabhas) and Rajinikanth-and-Akshay Kumar’s 2.0.
In Radhe Shyam, Prabhas will be seen as a romantic hero who knows a thing or two about palmistry and now has a job - not just to woo his lady love (Pooja Hegde) but also protect her. Made in Telugu as well as Hindi, the bilingual’s trailer has just been released and promises a different kind of narrative with a lot of VFX in there which warrants a big-screen watch.
Of course the biggest upcoming release of them all is RRR. With S.S. Rajamouli calling the shots, the film has been ready for a while - it was waiting for the right release window. RRR, which will be the first release of 2022, will also pave the way for other big releases of the year to enjoy a successful run at the box office.
Set in pre-independence time, RRR's star-studded cast includes actors NTR Jr. and Ram Charan in never-before avtars, Alia Bhatt as the leading lady and Ajay Devgn in a key role as well. One of the costliest films ever made in the country, there are a lot of expectations from it to be a thorough entertainer from beginning to end - the hype has been building up for the last three years. That it comes from the makers of the Baahubali franchise only ups the ante.
The stage has been set and these four South films are expected to keep the momentum going for the box office registers to continue ringing. There are massive expectations already and with audiences showing that they are ready to step into theatres as long as the content in there is impressive enough to merit a big screen watch, there is no stopping the beelines to the ticket counters.
Release dates
RRR - 7 January
Radhe Shyam - 14 January
Major - 11 February
Vikrant Rona - 24 February
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