PremiumNEW DELHI: Upcoming period drama RRR directed by Baahubali filmmaker SS Rajamouli will release in English, Portuguese, Korean, Turkish, and Spanish to grab more eyeballs internationally. In India, the film will see a release in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada.
The Ram Charan and Jr NTR-starrer has already made Rs350 crore by selling theatrical, satellite TV and digital streaming rights across all languages to Pen Studios. The film is slated for a 13 October release but may have to be pushed back due to prevailing uncertainty around the theatrical business in India.
RRR is a fictional story of India's freedom fighters, Alluri Sitarama Raju (Charan) and Komaram Bheem (NTR) who fought against the British Raj and Nizam of Hyderabad, respectively.
To be sure, before the covid-19 pandemic struck, Bollywood had managed several opportunities in new, emerging overseas markets. According to the Ficci-EY media and entertainment industry report 2020, overseas theatricals contributed Rs27 billion of the total Rs191 billion that filmed entertainment made in 2019.
In December 2019, Fox Star Studios released its superhit space drama Mission Mangal in Hong Kong with Cantonese subtitles. The Akshay Kumar and Vidya Balan-starrer was the second film in recent times to have been taken to Hong Kong, after Ayushmann Khurrana’s Dream Girl. Kangana Ranaut’s Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi had announced a release in Japan while Khurrana’s Bala made it to Saudi Arabia in November 2019. A few months before that, Yash Raj Films had taken its critically acclaimed comedy drama Hichki to Russia and Kazakhstan, while Tamil action comedy Seema Raja headed for a release in Poland. The same month saw Eros International release its 2015 blockbuster Bajrangi Bhaijaan in Turkey after having taken two films, Munna Michael and Shubh Mangal Saavdhan, to Russia.
