Renowned filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma has ignited controversy in the Telugu film industry with his recent assertions. Varma claimed that the success of Tollywood is heavily reliant on the inflated egos of its top actors, which places significant financial pressure on producers and breeds discontent among buyers. He even suggested that a prominent Telugu actor funded his failing film to keep it in theaters, despite it losing money.
In a recent interview with Gallata Plus, Varma discussed the disappearance of independent producers in both Hollywood and Bollywood, contrasting this with the situation in Tollywood.
He stated, “Individual producers don’t exist anymore. Maybe in South, there are a few, but when you look at Bombay, there are no individual producers. In Hollywood, I can’t even recall a name. Individual producers in Bombay make a pre-deal with the corporate.”
He further elaborated, “In the Telugu industry, individual producers still exist because it runs on heroes’ egos. The heroes don’t like the corporate. Because corporate are employees. They don’t cater to whims and fancies. They only cater to the agreement.”
Varma illustrated his point with an example, “A corporate company from Bombay did a big film with a Telugu star. When the film started losing money, the corporate company wanted to pull it. However, the star’s fans saw this as an insult. So, the star told the corporate head, ‘I will use my own money, but you have to keep it running for a certain period.’ As long as the hero is spending the money, the corporate has nothing to lose. The issue arose because this wasn’t communicated to the distributor, who stopped placing ads as they were not compensated.”
Varma emphasised that the rigid professionalism of corporate firms clashes with the Telugu movie stars’ approach. Instead of creating movies, these corporations are merely purchasing them, leaving actual film producers to manage enormous budgets and high selling prices.
This situation also puts buyers in a difficult position. Varma noted that this trend is unique to the Telugu film industry, as he has not observed similar dynamics in Bollywood, where buyers do not pressure producers to change their behavior.
