In the year 2005, SS Rajamouli, who had not yet achieved pan-India success, made a film with Prabhas called Chatrapathi and it turned out to be a huge blockbuster. The movie 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 casting Telugu actor Bellamkonda Sreenivas in his Bollywood debut. However, this time, the idea fell flat on its face as Chatrapathi has had a very disappointing run at the box office so far.
The failure of Chatrapati has once again underlined that the audience has evolved beyond remakes and wants originality in the stories they see unwrapping on screen. The original Chatrapathi, starring Prabhas, has already been dubbed in Hindi as Hukumat Ki Jung and telecast on satellite TV countless times. The failure of the remake indicates that the audience is not ready to go to the theatres to watch a film, the story of which they already know. Chatrapathi collected just Rs 50 lakh on its opening day, and trade analysts say it does not even cover promotional costs.
And not just Chatrapathi, but many remakes from down south have been rejected by the audiences as they are already familiar with the story. Stars like Hrithik Roshan and Saif Ali Khan could save Vikram Vedha, the remake of the Tamil film of the same name. The reason is, the original is already available for streaming on OTT. Apart from this, Hindi films like Bachchhan Pandey (remake of Tamil film Jigarthanda) and Selfie (remake of Malayalam film Driving License) have all failed at the box office as the audience has already seen the original.
This trend is also not limited to Bollywood films alone. 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 that could be the reason audiences did not want to watch Godfather. All of this points towards cine lovers gradually rejecting the idea of remakes and demanding originality in the movies they want to see.
