If you want to know about ‘Stardom’, read Sidney Sheldon’s novel named ‘A stranger in the Mirror’. It portrays the transformation of an ordinary person into a star. Life of star heroes and directors is glorious as long as they have ‘stardom’. It is the only quality that makes viewers to come to theatres even if the movie opens to bad talk. That’s why our star heroes command exorbitant remunerations.
First generation heroes of Tollywood such as CH Narayana Rao and Chittoor Nagayya used to take Rs.25,000 as their remuneration. Later, Nagayya went on to take one lakh for his movies such as ‘Beedala Patlu’ and ‘Thyagaiah,’ but led a poor life during his last days. Now, the remuneration of some of our star heroes has touched Rs. 100 crores per film excluding budget for making the film. If a hero be paid Rs. 100 crores as remuneration, what would be the budget for the film? How much should it collect? These are the questions that don’t have answers.
‘Pan-Indian’ films cannot be produced by a single producer. Even though there appears a single name in the title card as producer, there will be a group of people pumping money into the project.
An actor becomes a star if his films amass collections irrespective of his films’ negative reviews. This makes him eligible to command hefty pay cheques and producers stand in queue to rope in such stars. Prabhas’s ‘Saaho’ is the best example for this. Even though the movie attracted bad reviews and negative talk, his stardom made it amass huge collections and proved once again that Prabhas is the true Pan-Indian star.
Tollywood is now competing with Bollywood when it comes to hero remunerations now. Tamil Superstar Rajinikanth takes the highest remuneration in India followed by Bollywood hero Akshay Kumar. Amitabh Bachchan had also commanded highest remuneration back in his heyday. Prabhas is taking anywhere between Rs. 65-80 crores, while Pawan Kalyan and Mahesh Babu are in the range of Rs.50-60 crores. The younger lot like Ram Charan, Jr NTR and Allu Arjun are demanding Rs.40-50 crores.
Even though Megastar Chiranjeevi is still clinging to his No.1 position when it comes to senior heroes and commanding high remuneration, Balayya, Nag and Venky are selling themselves for reasonable prices. When it comes to mid-range heroes, Nani is taking Rs.12 crores and Vijay Devarakonda is giving his nod for Rs.10 crores. Sharwanand and Ram are demanding Rs.4 crores while Varun Tej surpassed them by taking Rs.5 crores.
As the pandemic handicapped the industry, OTTs have become the only exhibitory mechanism. To make films for OTT release, makers have to decrease their budgets and it is directly dependent on star’s remunerations. ‘Natural Star’ Nani even advised his fellow actors to reduce their pay cheques for the survival of industry during the release of ‘V’. Let’s wait and see whether our star heroes would decrease their remunerations to save producers and industry or not.
