For the first time, Tollywood Puja releases faced a riding of Rs 20 crores, this is a record in telugu film industry.

Here isn’t a single Bollywood movie release this Friday. But for the first time in Tollywood, jostling for space at the box office are seven Bengali movies (‘Rajkahini’, ‘Byomkesh Bakshi’, ‘Cross Connection 2’, ‘Shudhu Tomari Jonnyo’, ‘Katmundu’, ‘Antimyatra’ and ‘Chander Gaye Chand’). Approximately, that amounts to Rs 20 crore riding on Tollywood’s Puja releases this year. Yet, many fear that so many simultaneous releases may become counter-productive in terms of recovery. But the silver lining is that for the first time in Tollywood, the fate of Puja releases will become a case study for the industry that is undecided about what experiments in terms of casting and content have takers at the box-office.

Producer Srikant Mohta says this Puja will be a litmus test for the industry. “We’ve never had so many Puja releases,” he insists, adding that his own production house has two releases. “While ‘Rajkahini’ has been made on a budget of Rs 3.5 crore, Rs 4 crore was invested for making ‘Shudhu Tomari Jonnyo’. The response to the movies will answer a lot of questions regarding which films the contemporary Bengali audience accepts,” Mohta offers.

Some of the questions include whether the audience will accept any other hero (read Jisshu Sengupta) apart from Abir Chatterjee as Byomkesh Bakshi? Do remakes still work in Tollywood? Can a director like Raj Chakraborty bridge the gap between urban and commercial cinema? Has Srijit Mukherji been able to extract Rituparna Sengupta’s career-best performance in ‘Rajkahini’? Will Dev-Birsa Dasgupta have takers at the suburban box-office? Does the Bengali film audience like to watch sequels?