Tollywood audience are never hesitant to encourage and watch films of neighboring languages. It may be a bitter truth but several Tamil actors enjoy star status in Telugu while none of our Tollywood actors has enough fame in Tamil. Tollywood producers are shelling out big money to acquire the Telugu theatrical rights of Tamil stars. The dubbing rights of their films are sold for record prices. This is because there are several producers or distributors competing for the rights.

Kamal Haasan’s recent offering Thug Life Telugu rights are valued at Rs 18 crores and the film failed to collect even Rs 4 crores. Except Vikram, Jailer and Amaran, none of the recent Tamil films in the recent years have collected handsome money. Rajinikanth’s other films (post pandemic) left huge losses for Telugu distributors. The same is the case with the films of Suriya, Karthi, Vishal and others. Except the straight Telugu films of Dhanush, all his other films are disasters in Telugu.

But our producers are competing to pay record prices for the Telugu theatrical rights. The Telugu theatrical rights of Rajinikanth’s crazy film Coolie are sold out for record prices. It is a huge risk if the film ends up as a flop. If the film ends up as a super hit, the teams will recover their investments and they will not make big profits. No Tamil producer or distributor is taking risk or getting excited to acquire the theatrical rights of our Telugu stars in Tamil. But the case in Tollywood is completely different.