The Telugu version of the Hindi flick Queen has run into trouble. Having creative differences with its central character Tammannah, its director Neelakanta is said to have walked out of it midway. Eventually, director Prashanth Varma of Awe fame stepped in to complete the film. However, when the film’s poster was released recently, the director’s name in the credit line was missing and it raised a lot of speculations. Reports are that when Prashanth Varma stepped on board, he had made it clear to the film’s producer Manu Kumaran that he would ghost direct the movie and his name should not be featured in the credits. The producer also did not have any qualms over it, following which the director’s name has been omitted altogether.
The Bollywood flick Queen was a commercial success at the box office and also earned its lead actor Kangna Ranaut the National Award for Best Actor for her performance in it. Following its success, Queen is being remade in all the four south Indian languages – Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada. All the four versions of the film will hit the marquee on the same day and its makers are currently deciding on a suitable release date.
The Kannada version has Parul Yadav reprising the role done by Kangna Ranaut in the original while in Malayalam it is Manjima Mohan, in Telugu it is Tammannah Bhatia and in Tamil, it is Kajal Agarwal. According to reports, the directors of all these remakes have made some changes to the script to suit the sensibilities of the respective audiences.
Queen, directed by Vikas Bhal, starred Kangana Ranaut, Rajkummar Rao and Lisa Haydon in the lead roles. It was produced by Viacom 18 Motion Pictures in association with Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane and Madhu Mantena on a budget of Rs 12.5 crores and it went on to collect Rs 108 crores at the box office.
(Content provided by Digital Native)