Liger producer Charmme Kaur said that the underwhelming response to Vijay Deverakonda’s Liger and the success of Karthikeya 2 is quite confuing. She is of the opinion that storytellers need to work harder these days to excite viewers to visit theatres.
Liger producer speaks
Liger, which was released in the theatres on August 25, was jointly produced by Karan Johar in association with Puri Jagannadh and Charmme Kaur. The latter recently spoke about the performance of films in general at the box office.
The producer’s recent interview with Free Press Journal has spoken about the box office failure of Hindi films. She said that one needs to work extra hard to excite fans to visit theatres these days as they have access to a variety of content on OTT platforms.
“Definitely, people have access to better content in one click just by sitting at home. The whole family can watch the biggest budget films on television, and until you don’t really excite them, they aren’t coming to the theatres. But, this is not the case in Bollywood. In August, three Telugu films – Bimbisara, Sita Ramam, and Karthikeya 2 – did phenomenally well, which made Rs. 150–170 crores. It happened in the same country. It is difficult to understand since it doesn’t mean people in the South are crazy for films. It is a scary and depressing situation.”
Liger’s delay
Charmme also expressed her disappointment that Liger was delayed numerous times because of the Covid-19 lockdown, which made the journey more challenging. She revealed that they had unanimously decided that the film will have a theatrical release and also added that it felt like it was their responsibility to let films like RRR and Pushpa be released before.
She said, “We started the first schedule of Liger in January 2020, we met Karan Johar in 2019, and it has come out in 2022. We held back from coming to theatres for three years as we were extremely confident that Liger was a theatrical release irrespective of the first and second lockdowns, third wave, or theatres opening to 50% occupancy. It was our responsibility to let other major films, such as RRR and Pushpa: The Rise, come out first. Then, we lost summer and rain arrived, so we had to release on August 25. We faced constant hurdles, but we never gave up.”
Meanwhile, Liger is a sports drama that marks Vijay Deverakonda’s first collaboration with filmmaker Puri Jagannadh. The film stars Ananya Panday as the lead lady. The film also features Ronit Roy, Ramya Krishnan, Ali, Makrand Despande, and legendary boxer Mike Tyson. The film was shot simultaneously in Hindi and Telugu.
