PremiumSapta Sagaralu Dhaati promotion: Rakshit Shetty’s ‘cinema culture’ statement offends fringe group; netizens jump to his support
Rakshit Shetty was speaking at the trailer launch of the Telugu version of Sapta Sagaradaache Ello in Hyderabad, when he spoke about cinema consumption in Andhra/Telangana
Last Updated: 02.10 PM, Sep 20, 2023
In recent times, one of the oft heard reasons for Kannada films not drawing crowds is that audiences here do not have a culture of going and watching movies, no matter the cast, scale or quality, unlike those in, say, Andhra/Telangana or Tamil Nadu. Here, unconditional initial support only happens for, say, Tier 1 heroes, after which word-of-mouth publicity decides whether or not a film deserves a theatrical outing. On the contrary, audiences in Andhra/Telangana and TN, see films as a primary source of entertainment and watch them anyway.
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This was pretty much the context Rakshit Shetty referred to while speaking at the Telugu trailer launch of Sapta Sagaradaache Ello, which is releasing as Sapta Sagaralu Dhaati on September 22. Addressing the media in Hyderabad, Rakshit spoke about how the Telugu version of 777 Charlie was the highest grosser after the Kannada original. Calling the Andhra Pradesh/Telangana belt as the land of cinema, the actor-filmmaker said that it was a matter of pride to release his film in a place like that. Cinema, he added, is a culture there, and for people like him who consider films as their first love, releasing their movies in that region is like coming home.
Within moments of this statement a few fringe groups on social media attempted to sensationalize it and create a controversy, which was almost immediately shut down by well-meaning Kannada movie lovers. The unanimous response to a question on what people thought of Rakshit’s statement was that he was right. “He is right. Irrespective of any language they watch and support good movies,” wrote Sangamesh Gouda. Anant Mahajan added, “Cannot agree more. The amount of craze Telugu n Tamil guys have for their films is at least 100 times greater than us.” Vadiraj Kulai chimed in, “They love a movie irrespective of the language. It's the second biggest market for all non Telugu films.”