Naveen Yerneni and Yalamanchili Ravi Shankar’s Mythri Movie Makers, the production banner behind such films as Pushpa: The Rise Part 1, have another Telugu film due for release on 1st September. The film, Kushi, stars Vijay Deverakonda and Samantha Prabhu, and will be released in dubbed versions of Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada, besides Telugu, the language in which it has been made.
The trailers of all the five versions of the film were released yesterday (9th August) in Hyderabad. The film is a love story-cum-family drama as the characters played by Vijay and Samantha belong to two diametrically opposite families. While Samantha’s father is a believer in God and, therefore, superstitious to an extent, Vijay’s family doesn’t give importance to age-old beliefs. The two love birds decide to prove to the world that love can surmount all obstacles. All is fine till problems start developing between the married couple. Is it the dosha, which Samantha’s father was wary of before the two united in matrimony? Or are the differences between the husband and wife because of other reasons?
Director Shiva Nirvana says, “I wanted to give the audience something happy to go home with. Although the romantic film has a lot of family drama, emotions etc., the public will get up with a smile.” That’s actually the reason for naming the film Kushi. Asked why Kushi was spelt the way it was and not as ‘Khushi’, producer Ravi explained, “We did not get the title Khushi (with an ‘h’ between ‘K’ and ‘u’) in Hindi because it was registered by another producer. Hence we spelt it the way we did. Much later, we did get Khushi because the original producer did not renew the title, but our publicity material, with the spelling as Kushi, was ready by then in all the languages.”
Vijay Deverakonda is waiting with bated breath for his pan-India release on 1st September. One will recall, the actor was pretty confident about his first pan-India release, Liger, but the film failed to make the cut at the turnstiles. It was because he went wrong in his judgement that he has decided to not declare his feelings about the box-office predictions for his next three films, Vijay revealed at the press conference which followed the trailer release.
One feels, Vijay is being extra-sensitive about his error of judgement. After all, what is the thrill of working in films if you can’t estimate the box-office performance of your own starrers, and share this with others? The failure of Liger which, incidentally, Deverakonda had promoted in Hindi on the front foot, seems to have made the darling of the masses and classes alike, a bit over-cautious, if one may use the term. This may prevent him from promoting the film’s Hindi dubbed version. But if the self-imposed ‘punishment’ for a mere error in judgement about box-office prediction really does keep Vijay away from the Hindi film media, it will be sad because the trailer gives the impression that the film has a flavour which can work across states.
Hesham Abdul Wahab has scored the film’s music which is being loved by the public. Shiva Nirvana says that the songs of the inter-faith love story is a big asset of the film. On his part, Wahab jokes, “In the last two years, I’ve spent more time with Shiva (Nirvana) than with my wife!”