Last year, Chiranjeevi’s Telugu film Godfather, which was a remake of the Malayalam film Lucifer, also performed below expectations.
Not only Chhatrapati, but many remakes down south have been rejected by the audience.
In the year 2005, SS Rajamouli, who was yet to achieve pan-India success, made a film with Prabhas called Chhatrapati and it turned out to be a huge blockbuster. The film propelled Prabhas to a top league star in the Telugu film industry. 18 years later, director VV Vinayak tried to recreate the magic in Hindi by remaking the film with the same title and cast Telugu actor Bellamkonda Srinivas in his Bollywood debut. However, this time, the idea fell flat as Chhatrapati’s performance at the box office has been very disappointing so far.
Chhatrapati’s failure has once again underlined that audiences have evolved beyond remakes and want originality in the stories they watch on screen. The original Chhatrapati, starring Prabhas, has already been dubbed into Hindi as Hukumat Ki Jung and aired countless times on satellite TV. The failure of the remake is an indication that the audience is not ready to go to the theaters to watch a film whose story they already know. Chhatrapati collected only Rs 50 lakh on its opening day, and trade analysts say this doesn’t even cover promotional costs.
And not just Chhatrapati, many remakes down south have been rejected by the audience as they are already familiar with the story. Vikram Vedha, a remake of the Tamil film of the same name, could have saved stars like Hrithik Roshan and Saif Ali Khan. The reason being that the original is already available for streaming on OTT. In addition, Hindi films such as Bachchan Pandey (a remake of the Tamil film Jigarthanda) and Selfie (a remake of the Malayalam film Driving License) have failed at the box office because the audience has already seen the original film.
This trend is also not limited to Bollywood movies only. Last year, Chiranjeevi’s Telugu film Godfather, which was a remake of the Malayalam film Lucifer, also performed below expectations. A Telugu dubbed version of Lucifer is already streaming on OTT and this could be the reason why the audience does not want to watch Godfather. All this goes to show that cine-goers are slowly rejecting the idea of remakes and are demanding originality in the films they choose to watch.