The most sensational superhit movie of the season “Pelli Choopulu” has seen aggressive bidding by most TV Channels. As a film which generated unprecedented buzz and word-of-mouth publicity even from days before its release, there was initial buzz that the rights will be anywhere between Rs.1.25- Rs.1.50 crores. But Pelli Choopulu was different. A day into its release, the film already got rated in top websites with an average rating of 3.25 and above. The newspapers rated it also a superclean entertainer and the censor board gave a Clean-U certificate. It became the first budget film in many years to get released in 150 theatres across the two states not to mention the big release in US, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
According to informed sources, the producers Raj Kandukuri and Yash Rangineni were keen to get directly involved in negotiations with all the four leading channels – Zee Telugu, MAA, Gemini and ETV with bids re-opened at higher reserve price. They were confident that the unanimous applause and all-round appreciation from movie critics lavished on the film will make it a surefire winner on TV Channels. There are no vulgarities, violent scenes, or aspects which require even a re-certification on Censor Board. Typically, a TV Channel looks to a weighted average score of all these aspects before voting on a film they want to bid for – Excellent reviews, length of the film, entertainment quotient of the film, suitability for family audiences of all ages, good music and clean certififcate and a superhit talk. Without a doubt, Pelli Choopulu scored high on all these parameters and the result is, all the leading channels bid aggressively for the film.
But our sources now tell that the final price of TV Satellite rights were fixed for Rs.2.35 crores and a deal has already been closed with Gemini channel. A formal announcement to this effect will be made by the producers on Sunday. If the deal gets closed anywhere above Rs.2.25 crores, it is a stupendous feat for a small budget film. It rarely happens that the TV satellite rights fetch a price higher than the budget of a film. It is a signal for more innovative producers and directors to create content that gets as much rousing reception as Pelli Choopulu
