Om Namo Venkatesaya a dud!

Despite high expectations riding on it, the devotional film has turned out to be one of the biggest flops of Nagarjuna’s career

The much-awaited devotional film, Om Namo Venkatesaya, is in the news for all the wrong reasons. The film that showcases Nagarjuna as Hathi Ram Baba is the biggest disaster in Tollywood in recent years. The openings of the film have been bad and even a small star gets bigger openings than this. This film also happens to be one of Nag’s biggest flops when compared to his earlier flop films, Bhai and Kedi.

Director K. Raghavendra Rao and Nag, however, believe that the collections are going to improve after word spreads.

On the second day, they held a media conference and said that their earlier film Annamayya also got dull openings, but picked up after day 11.

Only this time, the situation is different and the collections are worsening. Even on a Sunday, revenues didn’t improve. As a result, the distributors have all become dull and sad. Interestingly, the film and Nagarjuna received a lot of praise from everyone. Mahesh Reddy, Nagarjuna’s best friend, is the producer and has expressed happiness at making the film. Of course, he is safe as he sold the film for a good price. Producer Dil Raju, who bought the Nizam area rights has incurred a loss of nearly `5 crore. According to a source, the Vizag area rights were bought by B. Satish and he incurred a loss of nearly `2 crore. When contacted, Satish didn’t want to talk about the figures, but admitted that the film is not doing well. “The film was released in nearly 45 screens in Uttarandhra and the revenue is disappointing. The film is good and people who watch it are giving positive feedback. In my view, the timing of this film is not correct as it should have released either on a festival date or during the summer holidays,” says Satish. Mahesh Reddy’s earlier film, Shiridi Sai was also a devotional one starring Nag, but that too was a flop. Several distributors, who bought Shiridi Sai also bought this film, hoping they would recover the money from the first film’s loss. But it seems that this film is no better than the first one.

The film should have been released on a festival date — B. Satish, Distributor