Ram Charan’s ‘Game Changer’ may hit Russian screens

If everything falls in place, the Ram Charan-Kiara Advani starrer 'Game Changer' will hit the Russian cinemas, says film producer Dil Raju

By Kapila Raghuram

Moscow: If everything falls in place, the Ram Charan-Kiara Advani starrer ‘Game Changer’ will hit the Russian cinemas. The producer of the film, ‘Dil’ Raju, who was here for the just-concluded Moscow International Film Festival, told ‘Telangana Today’ that his team was in talks with distributors in Russia towards this end.

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The film, directed by S Shankar and produced by ‘Dil’ Raju’s Sri Venkateswara Creations, is ready for release this Christmas. Talking about the Moscow Film Festival, Dil Raju, who is also the president of the Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce and Producers Guild, said the event was a good experience for the film fraternity to keep abreast with the changes in worldwide cinema in terms of content, picturisation, use of technology and other aspects.

“The gates for the Indian film industry have opened with Japan, China and other countries, and now Russia embracing our cinema, which was having a global impact. There are many opportunities now to promote India, particularly Telugu cinema globally. The Indian way of storytelling, and visual effects is catching up very fast globally. It has begun on a good note and over the years will spread across globally.”

Also dismissing any divide between the various industries in India, the well-known producer said: “Though there was a divide in terms of regional cinema and Hindi films, it was in the pre-Covid era. Now it’s the Indian film industry in total. It has become Pan-India and now acclaimed global recognition with films such as ‘Kalki’, ‘RRR’, ‘Laapata Ladies’.” For the record, ‘Laapata Ladies’ was the opening film of the Moscow International Film Festival.

On the impact of OTT and dwindling box office collections, Dil Raju who talked at length feels the emergence of the OTT platform has come as a challenge for movie makers who have to now churn out content which draws people to theatres.

A film such as ‘Kalki’, which created a buzz worldwide is one such good instance of recent times which saw the box office collections zoom. In Hindi, Stree-2, a small-budget film, went on to become a good hit and collections are on a par with the big-budget films. According to reports it has emerged as the second highest-grossing Indian film of 2024 (read till date).

“As such for the film lovers content and storytelling, visual effects and picturisation among other things is what that matters not the budget. Content is now being made with both the theatres and OTT platforms in mind. In a populated country like ours, 12-15 per cent come to theatres. We need to increase this percentage, which will in turn increase the revenue for the Indian film industry,” says the producer, hoping for the best.