Even as several big-ticket films are announcing their release dates, there have been reports of a major shuffle taking place in Kollywood this festive season, with a few hugely anticipated films contemplating a change in release dates. For a while now, we had been hearing that the Rajnikanth starrer ‘Annaatthe’, which was scheduled for a Diwali 2021 release, was to be pushed to Pongal 2022, thereby clashing with another big Tamil release, Ajith‘s ‘Valimai‘. Although, it is said that the makers of ‘Valimai’ themselves pushed the film’s release date to January to avoid a clash with the Tamil Diwali releases, on purely ethical grounds, considering the current situation and pressure on filmmakers to recover costs.
Meanwhile, news came in of the Pongal/ Sankranti 2022 festive season shaping up to be a blockbuster feast with four high profile south films locking their release date for the occasion. Pawan Kalyan and Rana Daggubati’s Telugu film ‘Bheemla Nayak‘ hits screens on 12th January 2022, a couple of days before Sankranti. Next, Mahesh Babu’s Telugu biggie ‘Sarkaru Vaari Paata’ arrives in cinemas on 13th January 2022. Prabhas’ pan-India, multi-lingual ‘Radhe Shyam’ hits theatres on 14th January 2022, on the auspicious date of Sankranti. As though this wasn’t enough, the latest entrant to join the string of releases is none other than Pan-India sensation ‘RRR’, SS Rajamouli’s Telugu period action drama featuring Ram Charan and Jr. NTR, along with Bollywood stars Alia Bhatt and Ajay Devgn.
Interestingly, immediately after the ‘RRR‘ update, news broke out that the makers of ‘Annaatthe‘ have decided to stick with the earlier scheduled Diwali release date. This may be due to too many blockbuster movies piled up for the Pongal/ Sankranti period. Another big rumour doing the rounds is that the makers of Vikram’s ‘Mahaan’ have also locked a Diwali release for the film. So now, the major scheduled Kollywood releases currently for Diwali are ‘Annaatthe’, ‘Mahaan’ and Silambarasan’s ‘Maanaadu’. Apart from these films, the other major anticipated Tamil films awaiting a release date are Suriya’s ‘Etharkkum Thuninthavan’ and Prabhudeva’s ‘Bagheera’. It is to be seen if these get added to the current Diwali movie mania. Stay tuned to Binged for more updates.