At the time of publishing this feature, director Prashanth Neel’s Salaar, headlined by Prabhas, had opened to an overwhelming response at the ticket windows. The celebratory atmosphere is a good way to sign off an otherwise underwhelming 2023 for Telugu cinema. This late December cheer is reminiscent of the excitement that director Sukumar and Allu Arjun’s Pushpa - the Rise generated towards the end of 2021, a year when theatres were closed for months during the pandemic.
The mammoth success of Pushpa followed by SS Rajamouli’s RRR in early 2022 put the Telugu film industry in an enviable position. While other industries struggled, it looked like Telugu cinema knew a thing or two about getting the audience, who were homebound during lockdowns, back to the theatres. 2023, however, has been a reality check. Barring Salaar, several ambitious Telugu films that hoped to cut across language barriers bit the dust.
Emerging directors made qualitative films that broke away from the clutter but these were few and far between. For every Balagam, Month of Madhu, MAD, Hi Nanna and Miss Shetty, Mr Polishetty, there were periods of prolonged lull. The summer of 2023 was the most lukewarm in the industry’s recent history, except for the pandemic years when the virus played spoilsport.
