Did ‘RRR’ team spend Rs.80 Crores to get Oscar Award – S.S. Rajamouli’s son clarifies

‘RRR’ the epic fantasy action adventure film from S.S. Rajamouli was a huge hit in India when released last year.  Later on the team promoted the film in international awards ceremony winning big and also getting appreciation from the global audiences. 

We have already seen that the song ‘Naattu Naattu’ from ‘RRR’ starring Ram Charan and Jr. NTR got the Best Original Song award at the Oscars held recently. While the nation celebrated music composer M.M. Keeravani and lyric writer Chandrabose holding the much coveted golden lady statuette there were also negative rumours.  

Some sections of the media reported that Rajamouli and his team spent Rs. 80 Crores to get the award and even went on to suggest that global film luminaries such as James Cameron were bribed to speak good about the film.

S.S. Karthikeya the son of director Rajamouli who also served as the executive producer of ‘RRR’ has opened up to HT about the issue.  He has stated ” “It is a big joke that we can buy an Oscar if we give money. With a 95-year-long history, it is an institution. Everything there is done according to a process. I can only say one thing – can we buy the love of the fans? We can’t buy the words of Steven Spielberg and James Cameron about the movie, can we? The fans have given us a lot of publicity.”

Karthikeya added “In the West, Hollywood movie makers turn to many studios for the Oscar campaign. We didn’t have that chance. The planned budget for the campaign is Rs 5 crores. That seemed too much to us. We tried to reduce the cost as much as possible. We wanted to spend it in three phases. In the first phase, we spent Rs 3 crores. After the nominations, we increased the budget. We thought it would be Rs 5-6 crores for the entire campaign. But finally, it was Rs 8.5 crores. More screenings had to be done in New York and Los Angeles.”  

Now that has put to rest the unecessary controversy surrounding such a prestigious win for India cinema.  Writer Vijayendra Prasad the father of Rajamouli has already announced that he has started writing the sequel to ‘RRR’ which will go on floors after the ace director complete Mahesh Babu’s 29th film.