Director Teja opens up on why he walked out of NTR biopic
Tollywood actor-producer Balakrishna’s dream project, the biopic on his late father, actor-politician NT Rama Rao was released earlier this year. The film got released in two parts titled Kathanayakudu and Mahanayakudu. But unfortunately, both the parts did not perform well at the box office.
Though both the parts were helmed by director Krish, director Ram Gopal Varma was the first choice to direct the film but he opted out citing creative differences with Balayya. Later, director Teja came on board and even commenced shooting the first schedule, but he also walked out of the project. Though there was no official reason revealed from the director's end on his exit, it was said that Balakrishna was keen on including as many songs as possible in the NTR biopic but Teja was not game for it as it would hamper the story flow, which is important for a biopic.
But now director Teja who is promoting his film Sita opened up on why he quit the movie. In a recent interview to TV9 Channel, Teja conveyed that once he commenced work on the biopic, he got into the depths of the story. At that time, fear came in that he couldn’t do justice to the biopic and hence he quit because he didn’t have the capabilities to handle it.
The first part of the NTR biopic, Kathanayakudu, hit the marquee early January 2019 but did not do too well at the box office. The theatrical rights were sold at a hefty price of Rs 70 crore. Surprisingly, the film wasn’t able to recover even 50% of the investment. But official news in this regard is that the distributors have settled about 25% of the losses.
The NTR biopic is helmed by J Krish and produced jointly by N Balakrishna along with Vishnu Induri and Sai Korrapati. The film had an impressive star cast with Vidya Balan, Mohan Babu, Sumanth, Keerthy Suresh, Rana Daggubati and others. MM Keeravani is the music composer for this venture with Gnana Shekar V.S cranking the camera and Arram Ramakrishna editing it.
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