Aha bags the streaming rights of Simbu's Eeswarudu

Silambarasan (a.k.a Simbu), Niddhi Agerwal, Nanditha Swetha starrer Eeswaran, the Tamil film directed by Suseenthiran, made it to theatres this Pongal. The family drama met with a lukewarm response at the box office and the fact that it was released alongside Vijay's blockbuster Master didn't help its cause. Disney+ Hotstar had bagged the post-theatrical streaming rights for the project . While the Tamil film digitally premiered on Hotstar recently, the streaming rights for the Telugu version of Eeswaran (titled Eeswarudu) have been bagged by the OTT platform Aha.

Aha is expected to announce the release date of Eeswarudu shortly. The OTT platform has gone big on dubbing popular Tamil, Malayalam films into Telugu since mid-2020 and the strategy has paid off in enhancing subscribers and sustaining their content flow week after week last year, gaining over a million subscribers by February 2021. Given Simbu, Niddhi and Nanditha enjoy considerable following in the Telugu land, this is indeed a smart move. Aha's latest Telugu dubbed release was Kala, originally a Malayalam film starring Tovino Thomas in the lead.

Produced by Balaji Kapa, Eeswarudu has music by Alaa Vaikunthapuramu Lo composer S. Thaman, while Tirru has cranked the camera for the same. Meanwhile, the film's lead actor Simbu is next awaiting the release of his long-delayed political thriller Maanaadu opposite Kalyani Priyadarshan directed by Venkat Prabhu. The film has been made at a staggering budget of Rs 125 crore. The Telugu version of Maanaaduhas been titled Rewind. A glimpse of this film released a few months ago was well received by audiences.