If a film is made in, say 50 crores, the norm in Tollywood is that they will publicize it as an 80 crore invested flick. These bloated figures are marketed through PR teams in order to exhibit that particular hero’s market as enormous as possible. That bluffs distributor into buying the film at exorbitant prices, which is what this trick is for. This trick is now being extended to sales figures too.

Take the case of upcoming film Ismart Shankar, whose production affairs and marketing are handled by former heroine Charmee. According to trade circles, this Ram Pothineni’s starer is being released on a profit-sharing basis in most areas with Andhra being sold for 5 crores nearly, and Nizam getting released on a rental basis with an expected business of 5.5 crores. Explaining that Nizam is sold for 7.20 Cr and Andhra for 6.50 Cr and the whole theatrical business made 17-18 crores nearly, Charmee’s team released some official figures, however.

Some noted distributors are quick to comment that Charmee’s team are inflating the figures to showcase Ram Pothineni and Puri Jagan combination has a big market. Tossing up 18 crores into the pocket is a daunting task when Ram’s previous films like Hello Guru Prema Kosame and Vunnadi Okate Zindagi are huge flops along with Puri’s wonderful creations like Paisa Vasool and Mehbooba. If we chop off the usual exaggerations, the film will be making somewhat close to 13-15 crores from pre-release sales, stressed few distributors.

Another point to be underlined is, if Charmee inflates the sales figures in a ‘ismart’ way, tomorrow they will prove futile for Ram’s career. Because if the film begets below average talk and still makes 15 crores, original figures will help them say that Ram could save even a flop film, but hyped figures will prove that there is almost 3-4 crores loss.