Film collections not affected by bandh

The ongoing bandh has no major impact on the Tollywood and Dookudu, the Mahesh Babu film released yesterday that is maintaining its record mark of collections.

With educational institutions declaring festival vacation and Tollywood earlier expressing its solidarity with Telangana agitation by shutting down screening of films by two days, it is a smooth sailing so far for the film industry.

"The collections in fact have increased. With the holidays and children at home, there is more demand for movies. Dukudu is creating records and the collections are at the brim," and industry sources said.

Earlier there were attacks on the film shootings and some of the top star movies were stalled by Telangana activists for their controversial statements. This was last year, but things changed and the atmosphere is conducive now.

For the first time after the Telangana agitation gained momentum last year, Telugu film industry expressed solidarity with the agitators and declared a two day bandh of cinema theatres and lost around Rs 6 Crore.

"There should not be any problem during, as it is a holiday season and films still remain the main entertain mode. There were no reports of any untoward incident and the latest release Dukudu is doing very well. RTC buses and Autos being off the road my cause some problems but die-hard fans are reaching the theatres in the available mode of transportation," the industry analyst said.   

However, on Saturday, in Warangal town, the Telangana activists stopped the screening of Dukudu at a theatre. The activists set ablaze the posters and caused some damage to the theatre. Later, the management stopped the screening. Analysts say that the collections of Dookudu might get affected if the similar instances occur in other theatres in the Telangana region.