Why Kuselan failed

First some heads-up...

Sreenivasan has proved himself as one of the greatest comedy actor in the recent past. He wrote Kadha parayumbol and produced it with a shoe string budget of 1.5crores. The movie was well received by fans, critics and got the rating of "Very Good" in most film reviews. He also wrote another successful movie called "Udayananu Tharam" earlier. This movie also remade into a lousy movie called "Vellithirai" by Viji and Prakashraj.

Mammooty played himself as the star and played a Cameo role. The climax was one of the most talked about emotional scenes on friendship in recent days. The movie went on to complete 100 successful days and collected 7-8 crores across the world.

P. Vasu saw the movie and purchased its tamil remake rights. He roped in Superstar Rajini and Rajini in turn roped Kavithalaya K Balachander as producer.

Confusion started even before the shooting began - stories were floating around the duration of Rajini's role. P Vasu claimed that Rajini's presence would be there for an hour or so compared to 18m appearance of Mammooty in the original.

Kuselan was sold for around 60 crores to Pyramid Saimira and they claimed that it is going to be a big release with some 1000 screens all over the world.

Rajini's fans always wanted a normal masala movie from him. They can never be satisfied with 30minute role. Rajini fans warned him about the diversions of his character earlier in Baba too !!! His fans passionate love with Baasha movie clearly indicates their preference.

Final conclusion on why rajini's kuselan failed:

Greed was the essence for the failure. A original low budget emotional movie of 2 crores was supposed to made at a cost of 40 crores in Tamil and got sold for 60 Crores to Pyramid !!!

It was released as mass masala movie at a astronomical price. Film fans knew about the duration of Rajini's role more than the theater owners, distributors.

Moviegoers felt it was a waste of money to purchase the Rs.80 movie ticket as it was perceived as Pasupathy movie. They simply stood by the decision even after the release of all songs and some scene clippings to local TV channels.

Meanwhile, film fraternity panicked and rushed for cover. The scene clippings came out clearly demonstrated the lack of creativity from Kuselan team.

It was definitely not for the lack of SPB intro song or AADI release but it was for the greed Kuselan team got punished !!!

By the way, one of the dialogue in the original Katha Parayumbol says "script and writers make stars and stars can't survive without it" !!!! Looks like P(ethal). Vasu could not understand it :)

Let us wait eagarly for Priyadarshan's Billo Barber to know whether the lessons are learnt !!!

I am very happy for Sreenivasan who sold the remake rights of the movie in many languages can make some more quality movie by way of reinvestment of profits :)