The first part of the NTR biopic, Kathanayakudu, hit the marquee last month 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, thus pushing all distributors into heavy losses. Following this, there were rumours doing rounds that the producers have decided to settle the losses incurred by the distributors by handing over the rights of the second part, Mahanayakudu, free of cost.
But official news in this regard is that the distributors have been settled for only about 25 per cent of the losses. Also, the rights of Mahanayakudu have been sold to Suresh Movies for a good sum. Now, the film is set for a grand release on February 22.
Mahanayakudu was initially planned as a February 7 release but was postponed to February 22.
The NTR biopic is helmed by J Krish and produced jointly N Balakrishna along with Vishnu Induri and Sai Korrapati. The film has an impressive star cast with Vidya Balan, Mohan Babu, Sumanth, Keerthy Suresh, Rana Daggubati and others. It has Balayya is playing the role of his dad NTR with Nandamuri Kalyan Ram as Nandamuri Harikrishna, Bharath Reddy as Daggubati Venkateswara Rao, Manjima Mohan as Nara Bhuvaneswari, Sumanth playing Akkineni Nageswara Rao, Vidya Balan as NTR’s wife Basvatharakam, and Rana Daggubati as N Chandrababu Naidu.
MM Keeravani is the music composer for this venture with Gnana Shekar V.S cranking the camera and Arram Ramakrishna editing it.
It may be noted here that initially Teja was roped in to direct the film but he was later replaced by J Krish. Sources say that creative differences between Teja and Balayya was the reason for the former’s ouster from the project.
The NTR biopic released as Kathanayakudu traced out NT Rama Rao’s rise to stardom and Mahanayakudu will be about his rise in the political arena.
(Content provided by Digtial Native)