Dil Raju Calls Samantha’s Shaakuntalam a Box Office Failure and His Career’s Biggest Disappointment
Samantha’s much-anticipated film Shaakuntalam, directed by Gunasekhar, finally hit the theatres in April of this year after multiple delays caused by technical and production issues. Despite starring Samantha, one of the most prominent female stars of the South Indian film industry, and receiving an extensive promotional campaign, Shaakuntalam failed at the box office.
In a recent interview with a popular Telugu YouTube channel, producer Dil Raju spoke about the film’s massive failure and called it the “biggest jerk” of his 25-year-long film career. He also reflected on his most successful year in the industry, which was 2017 when he had many highly profitable films. Dil Raju explained that only a handful of his 50 production ventures turned out to be financially unsuccessful, and Shaakuntalam was one of them. The epic drama had high expectations and was made on a budget of Rs. 65 Crores, but it ended up losing over Rs. 20 Crores.
Dil Raju admitted that he was aware of the film’s poor box office performance from the preview show itself, where the audiences gave mixed reviews. Shaakuntalam was based on Kavi Kalidasa’s legendary play Abhijnana Shakuntalam and starred Malayalam actor Dev Mohan in his Telugu cinema debut as King Dushyanta. The supporting cast included Sachin Khedekar, Mohan Babu, Aditi Balan, Ananya Nagalla, Prakash Raj, Gautami, Menaka, Kabir Bedi, and baby Allu Arha.
