The ten-award-haul at the 69th National Film Awards announced last week brought cheer to the Telugu film industry in an otherwise dull month. Barring the Telugu dubbed version of Rajinikanth-starrer Jailer, the industry did not have significant box office hits in August. All eyes are on a few big-ticket films lined up for September and October, beginning with the Samantha-Vijay Deverakonda romance drama Kushi, which will release on September 1. The film that is perceived to have the potential to rewrite box office records, though, is director Prashant Neel’s Prabhas-starrer Salaar: Part 1 - Ceasefire, arriving on September 28.
The other films scheduled to release in the festive months of September and October include director P Mahesh Babu’s Miss Shetty Mr Polishetty (Anushka Shetty and Naveen Polishetty), director Boyapati Srinu’s Skanda - The Attacker (Ram Pothineni and Sree Leela), director Anil Ravipudi’s Bhagavanth Kesari (Nandamuri Balakrishna) and Tiger Nageswara Rao (Ravi Teja). The industry hopes these films will ring in considerable numbers after the disappointing summer, with no big hits between April and June.
The romance drama Baby, which received a polarising response critically, was a smash hit at the box office soon after its release in mid-July. The film, made with a budget of ₹10 crore, has reportedly earned more than ₹85 crore (worldwide gross).
