2024 witnessed several bad films in Indian cinema and Tollywood. Going with the trend, the audience are not much interested to watch remakes and several remake films ended up as massive disasters in 2024. Bollywood had high hopes on Baby John featuring Varun Dhawan in the lead role. The film was badly rejected. Baby John is the remake of Tamil film Theri directed by Atlee. The film is now remade in Telugu as Ustaad Bhagat Singh and it has Pawan Kalyan playing the lead role. Harish Shankar is the director of the film and Mythri Movie Makers are the producers.

Harish Shankar is known to direct successful remakes. But his last film Mr Bachchan, the remake of Raid, failed badly at the box-office. Harish Shankar was badly trolled and criticized for his work. Ustaad Bhagat Singh would be an acid test for the talented writer and director. He is said to have made crucial changes for the script recently and he is expected to narrate the script to Pawan Kalyan very soon. The biggest challenge is if the audience will accept a remake at this time as Theri was dubbed as Policodu in the past. The original is available on multiple digital platforms and the Hindi remake was badly rejected. Ustaad Bhagat Singh will be the biggest test for Harish Shankar as a director. Pawan Kalyan promised to allocate bulk dates for the film in 2025.