The box office failure of Liger does not seem to have much effect on the marketability of Vijay Deverakonda. The actor is currently busy with the shoot of his upcoming Telugu film Kushi, co-starring Samantha Ruth Prabhu. With five weeks of shoot still left, the Shiva Nirvana directorial has already earned around ₹90 crore from non-theatrical business, as per trade source
Kushi, a romantic drama, marks the second collaboration between Vijay Deverakonda and Samantha Ruth Prabhu. The duo had previously worked together in Nag Ashwin’s Mahanati. As per trade analyst Trinath, the failure of Liger has had no impact on the business of Kushi, which is on the verge of completion.
“Kushi has done very good business from its non-theatrical rights. This includes rights from other dubbed languages including the film’s Hindi version. Despite the failure of Liger, the film has done business of ₹90 crore from non-theatrical rights such as OTT and satellite deals. The combination of Vijay and Samantha has wonders for the makers in terms of business deals because of the craze around the pair in the market,” Trinath said. Industry tracker Ramesh Bala also took to Twitter to share that Kushi has done business worth ₹90 crore from non-theatrical rights.
Liger, which released in August, marked Vijay’s Bollywood debut. The Telugu-Hindi bilingual was directed by Puri Jagannadh and also starred Ananya Panday and Ramya Krishnan. The much-hyped film only earned around ₹60 crore worldwide, despite being made on a reported budget of over ₹90 crore.
Recently, there were reports that both Vijay and Samantha were injured while shooting Kushi. The makers released a statement to clarify that the reports were false.
The statement from the makers read: “There are few reports that #VijayDeverakonda and #Samantha were injured while shooting for #Kushi movie. There is no truth in this news. The entire team returned to Hyd yesterday after successfully completing 30 days of shooting in Kashmir. Don’t believe such news”.
Meanwhile, Samantha currently awaits the release of her forthcoming Telugu thriller Yashoda, which hits the screens this week.