Lobbying for, and promotional activities leading to the Oscars is no longer a prerogative of firstworld countries.
India has learnt after Rajamouli’s RRR that to be noticed for the Oscars the film’s team has to go all out in Los Angeles months prior to the event.
A prominent source from the RRR team divulged to this writer, “I don’t know how much exactly they spent on lobbying for the Oscars. But it was close to 30-40 crore rupees. And that’s a moderate estimate.The song Naatu naatu , for example, was pushed for the Oscars like a global anthem. The amount of attention it got embarrassed even its composer M M Keeravani.”
Now one hears that the makers of the Allu Arjun franchise Pushpa 2: The Rule are setting aside a large chunk of the film’s budget for Oscar-related promotional activities in Los Angeles in December 2024-January 2025.
A source from Hyderabad informs, “Allu Arjun wants to target Pushpa 2 at the Oscars. He wants it to be bigger than RRR globally. No expenses will be spared.”
Allu Arjun’s sequel to the global blockbuster Pushpa has been in the making for nearly two years.The delay, if we may call it that considering the scale of the film, has to do entirely with audiences’ expectations.
When the first Pushpa film was released in 2021 it came with zero expectations, at least for audiences in the North who were only familiar with Allu Arjun’s work through his badly dubbed Telugu-to-Hindi films, suddenly awoke to the birth of superstar, Pushpa The Rise was the surprise blockbuster of 2021. Now, the audiences want everything to be bigger, more in-your-face spectacular in the sequel.
Recently the shooting Pushpa 2 came to a halt. Here is why.
A source close to the project in Hyderabad shares, “They are looking at fine-tuning the script, adding action scenes if required. Hence the brief postponement. The director Sukumar wants to ensure that the sequel lives up to audiences’ expectations.”
