End of the road for Maruthi?

At one point, his low-budget films created a sensation in Tollywood. Now with a spate of flops behind him, filmmaker Maruthi is banking heavily on his upcoming films “Kai Raja Kai’ and ‘Lovers’. Will his magic work at the box-office this time?

The film industry is a cruel place. Every Friday, fortunes change and filmmaker Maruthi, who has observed the industry from close quarters, knows this very well. At one point, there was no stopping him, as his low-budget flicks ruled the box-office. Soon after his first film ‘Ee Rojullo’, producers made a beeline to get him on board with fancy pay cheques, but the director took up top producer Bellamkonda Suresh’s film. His knowledge of the craft and measure of audience pulse was enough to bail out Suresh’s poor streak at the box-office with ‘Bus Stop’, his second film.

Thanks to his proximity with Allu Arjun, he then got an opportunity to direct a film for Geetha Arts, the prestigious production house of Allu Aravind. But before that he had committed himself to supervise ‘Prema Katha Chitram’ (PKC), which eventually he directed, though the credits indicate that it was cameraman Prabhakar Reddy who called the shots. The success of ‘PKC’, his third on the trot, put him on a different pedestal and the likes of Venkatesh, Danayya and Nithiin expressed their interest to collaborate with the director.

However, things took a U-turn for the Machilipatnam-born filmmaker. Even before ‘Kotha Janta’, his film with Geetha Arts, made it to the screens, he was slowly losing his newfound popularity. Comments a source close to the director: “His downward spiral began with his co-production ‘Romance’ last year. While ‘Ee Rojullo’ and ‘Bus Stop’ had content which was questionable, ‘Romance’ was in an altogether different league. Sreenivas, the other producer, appeared to cash in on Maruthi’s fame, but it backfired, thanks to the film’s cheap content and even cheaper visuals.”

But ‘Romance’ was not the first nail in the coffin for the filmmaker. His next two associations, ‘Bunny N Cherry’ and ‘Love You Bangaram’, too, failed to woo the audience. While ‘Bunny N Cherry’ was more of an experimental project, he had to disown ‘Love You Bangaram’, his co-production with KS Ramarao, after its release. He went on record to state that the film’s director Govi never heeded his advice. The biggest blow, however, came in the form of ‘Radha’, his film with Venkatesh, being shelved. The star, who commands great respect in and outside the industry, had to walk out of the project on charges of the script being plagiarised. And now with ‘Kotha Janta’ not meeting the audience expectations, Maruthi’s films with Nithiin and Sunil are also unlikely to go on floors anytime soon, adds the source.

That leaves us wondering if his second directorial project with Allu Aravind, which was supposed to start in October, is still on the cards. “It’s too early to talk about it. Equations change overnight in the industry. However, with ‘Kai Raja Kai’ and ‘Lovers’, his new productions, carrying some positive buzz, he is not done yet,” concludes the source.