Bandla Ganesh issues a clarification

Says Chiranjeevi hasn’t asked to reshoot Ram Charan’s ‘Govindudu Andarivadele’ as he is yet to see the footage in the first place

Be it Chiranjeevi asking to reshoot a few portions or Tamil actor Rajkiran being replaced, Ram Charan-starrer ‘Govindudu Andarivadele’ (GA) has been in the news for wrong reasons of late. However, on Saturday, producer Bandla Ganesh decided to put a full stop to such news. Admitting that Rajkiran indeed was replaced, he said, “After shooting his parts for 20 days, we felt that his character has somewhat failed to bring in the required Teluguness to the film, hence we had to replace him. Since it is a project which has the Telugu stamp all over it, we consulted Ram Charan before going ahead to rope in Prakash Raj for the role,” he said.

He said that Prakash Raj has sidelined his prior commitments to be a part of ‘GA’. “He adjusted dates of his other films, as he fell in love with the granddad role that he plays. Jayasudha will play his wife.” He added that he is not bothered about the money being spent on the reshoot. “There are rumours that Ram Charan has asked me to deduct his remuneration to pay for Prakash Raj’s fee, but it holds no truth. We are just shooting eight days extra, that’s it,” he added.

On news that Chiranjeevi was unhappy with a few portions of the film, he said, “As far as I know, Chiranjeevi garu is yet to see the rushes. We went to the shoot with the bound script and we are on time. We will wrap up the shoot by August 15 and will hit the screens on October 1.”

Reacting to reports that the films shoot has been halted a couple of times, he informed, “We had to put the shoot on hold for a few days last month as Charan was down with fever. Added to that, there were sequences which required 60 kids to be in the hot sun; I felt it was too risky and had to call off the shoot once.”