Bengaluru: Film actors in India enjoy a fan following like no other. Indian fans are the most passionate when compared to fans of any other film industry. Celebrities here are sometimes treated like Gods and fans go to any lengths to please their favourite icons.
Recently, such passion was seen when a group of youngsters mercilessly beheaded a young buffalo and splashed its blood on posters of Shivrajkumar and Kiccha Sudeep starrer “The Villain”, but not before they tortured and bashed the poor animal up. Although this was done by these misguided youngsters as a sort of prayer for the success of the film, it looks like the act did not work out so well as fans have come out in open criticism of the big budget movie.
A Jogi Prem directorial, “The Villain” was released on October 18, following a lot of promotion and hype. Bookings for the movie were opened even before the release with each ticket costing Rs 400 in multiplexes and Rs 200 in single screen cinema halls. The movie had a wide release across the state and fans were pumped to see two of Sandalwood’s biggest stars on the big screen.
Evidently, the movie does not live up to all the hype surrounding it as some fans came out of the theatres fuming. The film has received a rather mixed response from the audience overall. Some fans took to various social media platforms to criticise the film and the director the poor story and for an overall lack of quality. Another section of the audience, hard-core Shivrajkumar fans, have also taken to social media to criticise the movie. However, their reasons have close to nothing to do with the film’s quality. Shivanna’s fans are supremely upset that Kiccha Sudeep has been given more prominence. Another reason for their displeasure with the film is that, towards the end of the film, Sudeep is seen hitting Shivanna twice, with no retaliation from the latter.
While it is common for angered fans to lash out at the film crew, especially the actors, Shivanna’s fans have taken to social media and have uploaded videos launching scathing attacks on the film and its director. Some have even taken things to a personal level, attacking Prem’s personal life.
The director filed a complaint with DCP (West) Ravi D Channannavar regarding the overtly personal attacks on his wife and himself and requested him to take action.
Speaking to reporters, Prem said that he was filing a complaint so that no other filmmaker goes through this kind of situation. He then added that one can take the liberty to talk about the quality of the film, but cannot attack him and his family over a film he makes.
Small productions suffer after “The Villain” releases
Meanwhile, several smaller film productions are suffering the consequences of having a release so close to that of a big budget and star backed film. Although these small productions have received positive reviews from the critics as well as the audience, they have either been dropped from theatres or are slowly being phased out due to a lack of audience numbers. A source (on condition of anonymity) in the Sandalwood industry told NewsKarnataka that though the audience numbers for “The Villain” have dropped since its initial release, the movie will continue to run as it is a big budget film with big names attached to it.
“The movie will continue in theatres as the distributors have invested a lot in it. The theatre owners have also paid a lot to release ‘The Villain’ so they will run it till they are able to recover a major portion of their investment. People will continue to go and watch the film because the two leads have a huge fan following. many of the smaller films were removed from theatres after ‘The Villain’ was released. There are also no big films being released till December 21, which is when ‘KGF’ releases, so people will go to watch the film,” he said.
When asked how such a problem could be solved, the source said that unlike the Bollywood film industry, the release dates of the films in Sandalwood is not announced beforehand. “In Bollywood where they announce the date before production begins. This helps to avoid problems for smaller films as their release date can be scheduled when there are no big budget films. In Sandalwood, this is not possible as the film’s release date can be scheduled for a week after the receipt of the certificate from the board. This way, a big budget film can suddenly be released in the same weekend that smaller films are releasing and there will not be any way for smaller films to avoid this. If we corporates come into the Sandalwood industry then maybe some structure can be introduced. Since there are mostly individual film productions houses here, they don’t announce the release date in advance.
