Gaddalakonda Ganesh

<p>In a , an who aspires to become a , Abhilash Abhi is insulted by one of the directors and he resolves to become a good director with a good film in a few days. Another producer likes Abhi’s hard work and suggests that he do a . He decides to make a biopic of a gangster. In search of a gangster, he finds a ruthless gangster named Gaddalakonda Ganesh Gani, who lives in the town of . Abhi lands in Gaddalakonda and starts learning about Gani with the help of his friend Chintakayyi. Abhi traps Bujjama, the granddaughter of Gani’s chef, and she falls in love with Abhi who realizes this and reciprocates her feelings. After some hilarious scenes, Abhi and Chintakayyi befriend Thuppaki, one of Gani’s henchmen. Later the duo learns that Thuppaki is helping Prabhakar, one of Gani’s rivals, to kill Gani for his position. Gani acknowledges this, and plans to kill Thuppaki and also kidnaps Abhi and his friend. Abhi tells the truth, and Gani feels happy they are making a biopic about him and narrates his story including his criminal activities. From childhood, Gani started beating people for money. Later he became a for an Gani was also a fan of the actress and fell for a girl also named Sridevi Devi, a , but she didn’t accept him because of his aimlessness. Later she also reciprocated his feelings after he rescued her from . However, Devi’s father refused to accept their relationship due to the . Devi and Gani decide to escape from Gaddalakonda, and Gani refuses to kill someone for the M.L.A. because he wants to leave behind his . The M.L.A. informed the police about Gani’s whereabouts. The police came to the railway station and beat up Gani. At the same time, Devi’s father threatens her to marry the bridegroom , saying he would otherwise order the police to kill Gani. Devi reluctantly married a police officer who belonged to her caste. Another M.L.A. with a lawyer came to the police station and said that Gani’s M.L.A. had informed the police about his whereabouts. Gani then went to his M.L.A. and slit his throat in front of his mother. Gani’s mother then filed an against him. But Gani claimed in court that his mother is mute. From that day onwards, she refused to speak with Gani. Presently, Bujjama learns about Abhi and confronts him. At a party celebrating Abhi’s return to , Bujjama asks Gani to act as a protagonist in his biopic. Gani agrees against Abhi’s wishes. However, Abhi changes his mind after listening to the theatre operator’s words and his passion for directing a film, but he can’t do it due to Gani’s bad acting. Then Abhi appoints Muni Manikyam for Gani and his gang. Later the acting coach praises Gani for his acting skills due to his ruthless behaviour and humiliates Gani and his gang while they are training. The shoot begins. The title of the film is . After understanding the difficulties in directing the film, Bujjama reconciles with Abhi. But things take a turn when Gani also changes his mind and falls for Bujjama. At the audio launch, Gani announces that he has gifted a villa to Abhi and wants to marry Bujjamma. The film is released and opens to a tremendous response. At the same time, Abhi elopes with Bujjama. Gani learns of this and decides to kill Abhi. Meanwhile, Gani’s reputation increases due to his acting skills. The people who feared Gani are now asking for selfies and autographs. The little daughter of Thuppaki, who also once feared Gani, kisses him and praises his acting skills. Gani’s mother, who refused to talk to him in the past also speaks to him. Seeing all this, Gani spares Abhi and Bujjama and gives up his rowdy career. Prabhakar’s henchman asks him to include him in Gani’s next film, which is being directed by . Abhi’s takes Gani’s criminal evidence ( and files) and hands it over to the , who turns out to be Devi’s husband. Devi takes the evidence (tape recorder) and grinds it in a blender. When the D.C.P. asks Devi why she had destroyed the evidence, she replies that it’s because the D.C.P. couldn’t keep his promise to not incriminate Gani. This indicates that Devi still loves Gani. Later, Devi also praises Gani. Abhi uses Gani’s gang to threaten stars like to act in his film and later marries Bujjama, while Gani remains single. “When I was working on my next film’s script, ‘s released and it was then I watched his again. was my favourite film and I believe there was some magic in this story and thought it would work well in Telugu too. I felt will bring a fresh perspective for the negative role played by in the original and that’s how began”. In early November 2018, it was reported that was to remake the critically acclaimed -language film (2014). That December, was reported to play lead role in the film. In early January 2019, Varun revealed that he was approached for the role, but the final call was still on-going. Tej revealed that many people had cautioned him and asked him not to sign the film, since his role has negative shades. He took the script to , who didn’t ask him if he was going to play the hero or villain and told him that the script was good and that he should go ahead and sign the project. So he signed the film immediately. Harish said “After , I wanted to go ahead with an urban love story on the lines of and with Varun Tej and pitched the script of . But he was looking to break his lover boy image and is keen to do a mass entertainer in my signature style”. After eight hour long discussion both decided to remake . The project was produced by Ram Achanta and Gopichand Achanta under their banner 14 Reels Plus Entertainment. The company made a public announcement on 25 January 2018, confirming the project, and the film’s official title was revealed on 27 January 2018. gave the original story and Harish Shankar made some changes to original story, later Mithun Chaitanya and Madhu Srinivas the film. Dialogues were written by Harish himself. I didn’t want to change the script written by Karthik (Subbaraj) as I thought it was brilliant. However, I have adapted the story to suit our local sensibilities keeping Varun’s image in mind. I have also created a substantial role for and her presence will take the film to a different level. If you recall, was released in Telugu with the same name, but not many people watched it. So, we took a calculative step, acquired the remake rights and made Valmiki. — Harish Shankar Prior to the start of film production, both Harish and Tej worked with each other six months for making changes from the original film and characters. “One of the major changes that we have done to this character, originally essayed by , was give him a backstory to justify why he had become like that. In the original version, Bobby Simha didn’t have a baggage to play that role and he was terrific. But Harish opined that since I had been playing lead roles in the past few years, giving a strong backstory will make it easier for the audience to accept me playing a bad guy. That’s how Pooja Hegde came onboard and she has an interesting role to play in the second half of the story. All the details about my look, the dialect I’m going to use, and body language emerged from the long conversations I have had with Harish during this phase”, Tej added. was initially roped in to compose the score for the film. But later signed to compose music for the film. Harish further retained most of his regular technicians including cinematographer , editor Chota K. Prasad, stunt choreography duo , dance choreographer and art director Avinash Kolla. The film’s with a ceremony was held on 27 January 2019 at , which saw the attendance of noted personalities from the . , , , graced the event as chief guests, along with film’s cast and crew. Varun Tej portrays the title character Gaddalakonda Ganesh, a gangster, and sported a bearded look for his role in the film. About his role Tej said “I don’t see a character as positive or negative. Any role that excites me and makes feel I’m doing something different, I do it. This character got me excited from the minute I heard the narration.” Tej learned the for his role and was also informed by . In February 2019, was confirmed to play the female lead, marking her second collaboration with both Tej and Shankar after (2014) and (2017) respectively. “Pooja’s character, the ‘innocent but feisty’ Sridevi, wasn’t part of the original. I got her in because I wanted to see how Ganesh would react to having a girl in his life. People will love her in the remix that we shot at [ ]”, Shankar on Hegde’s character. Hegde felt that she was “excited to play a super special character in this film”. was reported to be playing an aspiring film maker in the film. was reported to play a supporting role in the film and was paired opposite Atharvaa. The film marked the Telugu film debut of both Atharvaa and Mirnalini. and joined the casts to play cameo roles, and and joined the cast for guest appearance. the film began from February 2019. joined the shooting in March 2019. In late-March, it was reported that Varun Tej would join the sets in mid-April 2019. Later, he joined the sets on 16 April 2019. In May, footage of Tej was leaked and went viral. Tej met with an accident while travelling from Hyderabad to to take part in shooting of the film. In mid-June 2018, Harish Shankar tweeted that filming was happening at . In July 2019, while shooting in of , the community halted the film’s shoot (see ). Later the production moved to , Hyderabad. In late-July 2019, Pooja Hegde joined the sets. In early-August, Hollywood cinematographer visited the film’s set. A song featuring Pooja Hegde and Tej was shot on the banks of at in late-August. Principal photography by 4 September 2019. of the film began simultaneously with the wrapping-up and continuation of film production. Dubbing works of the film began in August 2019. Varun Tej had put in extra efforts to dub for the pre-interval sequence. “I took an entire day to dub for it. Like the original, Valmiki too has a run-time of around three hours”, he added. work of the film was done by . The trailer cut was done in late-August by A. Ravi and Aswin Siyadri and was over by early-September 2019. On 19 September 2019, the film received a from the , with a finalised runtime of 173 minutes. In June 2019, 14 Reels Plus released a pre- on social media platforms. On 15 August 2019 the team released the official teaser and started promoting the film by releasing singles from the album. The official trailer of the film was unveiled by 14 Reels Plus on 9 September 2019 and trailer launch event was held on the same day in . As part of film’s promotion, in collaboration with , the production’s marketing team placed advertisements on Hyderabad Metro trains. On 15 September 2018, a grand pre-release event for the film took place in at , with as the chief guest. The soundtrack is composed by . The song ” ” is a remix of the song ” ” from the 1982 film . The film marks Meyer’s second collaboration with Harish after (2015). The film featured four tracks with lyrics written by , , and . The soundtrack album was released by on 5 September 2019. The initial release contained only three tracks; the fourth one was excluded as it was released under the record label . The release coincided with a promotional event held in to promote film’s fourth single “Elluvochi Godaramma”. , the legendary ancient Indian poet of the , is especially revered by the and many people from that community protested to change the name of the film as the lead actor is in a negative role. The release of the film was stalled in and districts of by their respective due to the protests. In January 2019, Boya Hakkula Porata Samithi filed a petition in the and Andhra Pradesh Valmiki Boya Sangam (APVBS) in the with No:139/2019 by State General Secretary Kranthi Naidu Boya; both contending that the title hurt sentiments as the name of a great saint as Valmiki was being used for a character that donning the role of a villain. Due to many controversies over the film’s title and release stalling in some areas, the title was changed to only 6 hours prior to the release of the film. The film was initially scheduled to be released on 13 September 2019, however it was postponed to 20 September due to production delays. The film’s digital rights were acquired by and it started streaming on Hotstar VIP from 4 November 2019. The original Telugu-language version of the film premiered on television on 12 January 2020 on , and registered a of 12.75 according to , becoming the Varun Tej’s most viewed film on television. The dubbed version premiered on Dhinchaak TV channel on 6 March 2022. Despite being a remake of the Tamil film , it was also dubbed in Tamil as in 2021. The film was also dubbed and released in as in 2022. received a positive response, with both critics and audiences praising cast performances (particularly Varun Tej and Pooja Hegde), action, direction, story and screenplay. Neeshita Nyayapati writing for gave 3.5/5 rating praising ‘s performance as a gangster. A critic of rated the film 3 out of 5 stars calling it “worth watching” and wrote “though this is a remake film, the director has succeeded in making the necessary changes and made the film really interesting. The movie starts off on an interesting note and the entire first half is filled with the some action sequences and the story of the gangster.” Rating the film with 3 out of 5 stars, Jeevi of wrote “Harish Shankar takes the Tamil cult classic and gives a mass tweak to it by changing the PoV from hero to villain. Varun Tej adds a new weapon to his armoury with this film. Plus points of the film are Varun Tej and mass elements.” Banda Kalyan writing for gave 3/5, pointing out that the only drawback of the film is the forced comedy and how people are simply laughing at the screen while watching a film about a gangster. A critic rated it 3 out of 5 stars and wrote “On the whole, is a passable mass drama which has a few good moments. Varun Tej leads from the front with his solid performance and rocking makeover. The fun generated works in places and keeps the audience engaged.” Sankeertana Varma from noted “The entertaining film is packed with inside jokes, but a laugh is inevitably followed by a wince”. Sangeetha Devi writing for suggested this adaptation raises a toast to the cinema, more importantly showcases the power of the director. Hemanth Kumar CR of wrote “Varun Tej’s makeover as a fierce gangster is Gaddhalakonda Ganesh’s biggest USP and Harish Shankar taps into the actor’s energy to add zing into this film” had higher occupancy on its opening day. The film netted 16 crore in its opening weekend. The film grossed 45 crore in its theatrical run with over 25 crore as distribution share, becoming a commercial successful.</p>