Maverick director Ram Gopal Varma’s latest film “Vyuham,” is supposed to be aimed at boosting the political image of YSR Congress party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy.
But it appears the film focused more on running down the opposition Telugu Desam Party led by former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu and his alliance partner Pawan Kalyan, rather than highlighting the image of Jagan, leading to the inevitable – the film is now caught in legal tussle.
According to sources, “Vyuham” which has the financial backing from a young parliament member from Rayalaseema, was made in a crude manner without any technical qualities, as it is a low-budget film.
“It is no different from Varma’s earlier films like “Vangaveeti” or “Lakshmi’s NTR” or “Amma Rajyam Lo Kadapa Biddalu” or “Konda.” None of these films had any viewers, let alone making money. Similarly, “Vyuham” too might damage the image of Jagan, as Varma banks on theatrics and cheap tricks,” sources said.
Yet, some YSRC leaders close to the chief minister are learnt to have projected before him that Varma has made a wonderful film and it would bring a lot of mileage for him ahead of the assembly elections.
But when the film makers organized the pre-release function of Vyuham last week at Indira Gandhi Municipal Stadium at Vijayawada, which was attended by ministers like Ambati Rambabu and Jogi Ramesh, there were hardly 2,000 people at the event, despite massive arrangements made by the YSRC leaders with the government support.
The murky controversy over Varma’s Vyuham, which was already expected because that is what he wants, has upset the calculations of another director Mahi Raghava, whose Yatra-2 is slated for release in the first week of February.
The film, made with a budget of over Rs 60 crore, is professionally-made with Jagan’s padayatra as the central theme. It also has the elements of how Jagan was shunted out of the Congress, fixed in the CBI cases and sent to jail and how he floated his own party and brought it to power in the state.
Mahi is learnt to have made all the arrangements for grand release as it has funding from his NRI friends, but now with Varma’s film landing in ugly legal battle, he is a worried man. For a failure of Vyuham will definitely have its spin-off effect on Yatra-2.
“If the RGV’s film bombs at the box office with poor ratings, which is most likely to happen, it will have negative impact on Mahi’s film as well,” an analyst said.
