The making of Kushi

31st of 1999! I still remember that day. I have seen a big poster announcing the muhurat of ambitious project of the film titled 'Cheppalani Vundi' starring Pawan Kalyan & Amisha Patel in the music direction of Ramana Gogula on the roads of Banjara hills. AM Ratnam who was making Kushi in Tamil is supposed to do that remake as Cheppalani Vundi in Telugu.

It took three more months for Pawan's Badri to release. There followed a grave silence for a couple of months with Pawan Kalyan going to Mauritius to have story sittings with Bheemineni Srinivasa Rao.

During the same time, Tamil Kushi was released and it has got a terribly bad talk. The doomsayers in the Telugu film industry started bad mouthing about the project and declared that Pawan has ditched the producer AM Ratam and this film would, eventually, be never made. But Pawan Kalyan, who always has a surprise up his sleeves, silently started the shooting of AM Ratnam's film in the direction of AJ Surya. The Tamil Kushi went from strength to strength from the day one and went on to become a classic silver jubilee hit in Tamil.

Eventually, this film has got the unprecedented media attention. But publicity shunning Pawan Kalyan has never spoken a word to press during the production of the film and AM Ratnam did not budge to the demands of the press to release a few photographs of the film.

Though, this is a remake of Tamil Kushi, the script has taken lot of fine-tuning to suit Pawan's image. Pawan is acting as a martial arts man who is in love. This film is about a girl and a boy who are born at the same time in the Kolkota. They grow up and love each other madly. But both these people have inflated ego and are expecting others to say ILU (I Love You). This is the point on which the entire film revolves around. SJ Surya, who is known for his refreshingly new screenplay uses the cameraman PC Sreeram to maximum effect to do as many close up shots as possible. Hence, you can see a new Pawan Kalyan and Bhumika Chawla in this film. Pawan has learnt a new martial art called 'ISKINA'. There is said to be an amazing display of this martial technique in a fight that comes in the second half of the film. Pawan Kalyan has also tuned his vocal chords to sing small bits in this film, which are not there in the audiocassettes.

Nonetheless, there is an undercurrent fascination for Pawan Kalyan. The trade enquiries started pouring in from the unexpected buyers offering astronomical amounts. AM Ratnam has to take his own time in deciding the lucky distributors and pocketed a cool table profit of three crores with Kushi. But, as we have seen in the past, making money is never taken priority over the quality of the film for AM Ratnam.

This film was bought outright for 4.5 crores for the Nizam territory as the nag's film Eduruleni Manishi was sold for 1.75 crores. Such is the Pawan grip of Boxoffice in Nizam. The three theater complexes of RTC cross roads, namely Odeon, Sandhya and Sudarshan vied to exhibit the film. But Sandhya, which has shown earlier films Pawan Kalyan, got an edge over the others and pocketed the exhibition rights of the film for a staggering amount of 36 lakhs.

The distributors in USA are not far behind too. The highest offer that is made for any Telugu film has been 9 lakhs (for Jayam Manadera). The distributors have gone to the extent of paying 15 lakhs for this film. But AM Ratnam has to budge to the diplomatic pressure from Allu Arvind as he wanted to own the USA rights.

This much awaited film is releasing on 27th of April and we, at idlebrain.com, will make no stone unturned to give you the best of the coverage through our Jeevi review, mega posters, dialogues and budugu trivia. Stay tuned to idlebrain.com on 27th April the get the fastest review at idlebrain.com.

Other Kushi Links
Juke Box
Mega Posters