Recently, a group of distributors and exhibitors from Rajahmundry urged big Telugu stars to do two films every year so that the financial health of the industry improves. A distributor opined that each crowd-pulling star doing two films a year would be the silver bullet that will end all troubles.
The ball appears to be in the court of heroes but the truth is something else, unless you believe that movies are physical labour and not works of creativity. Heroes, at least theoretically, will be ready to exert themselves if directors come up with good scripts. When there is a severe paucity of ideas and fresh stories, heroes doing two or three movies per year won't make any real material difference. There will be more flops and more losses.
Chiranjeevi, for one, was ready to do one film every six months. He would have stuck to that plan had Bholaa Shankar and Acharya become money-spinners. He would have teamed up with Puri Jagannadh and younger filmmakers left, right and centre. He hit the pause button and rightly so.
The likes of Mahesh Babu realized it long ago: that craze can't be monetized at will. There is no ideas bank that serves as a tree on which films grow.
So, distributors and exhibitors should plead with directors and writers to ideate refreshing ideas that inspire actors. And those pleas won't help. Because appeals in and of themselves don't stoke creativity.
