RRR director S.S. Rajamouli’s son Karthikeya who helped his father with the VFX of the mega-film , recently claimed in a press interview that the RRR team had spent only Rs 18 crores to campaign for the Oscars.
This is not only an erroneous figure, it is also preposterous.
A well-informed source in Hyderabad tells me, “Everyone even remotely connected to RRR knows they spent at least 50 crores lobbying for Oscars for Rajamouli for direction, Ramcharan and NTR JR for acting and Keeravani for the song Naatu Naatu. When Naatu naatu was the only Oscar nominee, the team felt a little cheated and silly. So they decided to scale down the amount. But you can’t change 80 crores to 18. It is downright absurd.”
The source says Karthikeya did his own (fake) maths to save RRR from further questioning on the Oscars bill. Instead he has laid the RRR team open to a litany of ridicule.