Pushpa 2 is the talk of the nation now with regard to Indian cinema. The film broke several records in the Hindi market and set a new benchmark for box office potential.
However, the bitter truth is that the film hasn’t broken even in many centers of Andhra Pradesh and Nizam regions with its Telugu version so far.
Except for the Ceded area, both major regions of the Telugu film market have experienced losses. In fact, Guntur only recently managed to break even.
This serves as a lesson that the potential of Telugu cinema has certain limits that cannot be overestimated.
Selling the film at Rs100 crore for the Nizam region and significantly hiking up ticket prices, the film still couldn’t break even despite these efforts. If the GST amounts are returned, then it can be called a breakeven in Nizam.
Even abroad, the film made just marginal profits in North America, finally making a gross of $15 Million.
If this continues, no distributor will see any profit and, moreover, will end up incurring definite losses.
Many assumed that the controversy surrounding Allu Arjun's alleged arrest would boost collections in the Telugu market, but that didn’t happen. On the contrary, collections dropped day by day.
In a way, it shows that audiences treated the news and the film separately, without being influenced much.
Keeping all this in view, it should be concluded that only the Hindi version of the film saved the producers overall; otherwise, it could have ended up as a budget disaster.
In fact, Allu Arjun should now be considered a Bollywood star rather than a Tollywood one, as his market and fan base are stronger in the Hindi belt than in the Telugu belt. This has been clearly proven with Pushpa 2.