Bollywood, here come the south stars

Come January 2010 and the tide could turn forever. Rang De Basanti brooder Siddharth seamlessly segues into the frames of Chandan Arora’s Striker. Even before his second Hindi film hits the screens, the Hyderabad boy has three Hindi films ready to roll off the racks.

Elsewhere in the ghats of Malshej, Chennai star Vikram goes through the hectic paces for Mani Ratnam’s bilingual Raavan. Playing dual roles of Ram to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s Sita in Hindi and the eponymous Raavan in the Tamil take. At a reported fee of Rs 5 crores plus, Tamil superstar Suryah has been snapped for Ram Gopal Varma’s Rakta Charitra. The director has been wooing the star ever since he made an impact in the Tamil version of Ghajini.

Enquiries for Telugu supernova Mahesh Babu have been reportedly made in the hallowed portals of Yash Raj Studios. Mumbai’s young film-makers are keen to snap up both Chiranjeevi’s son Ram Charan Tej and his nephew Allu Arjun for A list Hindi projects.

All of a sudden, South India has a new name. And it isn’t Rajnikant or Kamal Hassan. A new bread of clean-cut hotties is breaking the straitjacketed thoughts of these megastars. Allu Arjun and Ram Charan Tej are just names in Mumbai and Delhi but scorch the screens in Dindigul. They are yet to be seen in Kolkata but their effigies are displayed in Kadalur and Cuddapah. As seamlessly as they flit from Tamil to Telugu to Malayalam, so do they perchance dream of making the crossover to Hindi - the last bastion.


Take 1, Siddharth Suryanarayanan: Intelligent, intense… his roles are multiplying as we speak - with three films under his belt, Karan Singhania of Rang De Basanti has survived the shootout and is one of the last men standing.

Suryah, already a megastar (Aamir Khan was reportedly blown by his performance in the original Ghajini and decided to do the role in the Hindi version) will be in Ram Gopal Varma’s next. Discreet enquiries are being made for Mahesh Babu; Vikram plays one of the leads in both language versions of Mani Ratnam’s Raavan. Nagarjuna’s 23-year-old son Nag Chaitanya, despite the dismal showing of his first film, is also being touted as a rage in the Jubilee Hills circuit. Another busybody who will take his bows in 2010 is Venkatesh’s nephew Rana Dagubatti, familiar with Mumbai’s jet set crowd too.

Ask Siddharth if he is in a mood to triple time Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai and here’s what comes. “I live a mongrel lifestyle. In Delhi, I was a Madrasi; in Chennai I was a Delhi boy; when I moved to Hyderabad I was a Chennai boy; when I came to Mumbai I was a South star; and back in Hyderabad I was the Rang De Basanti hero. Nobody knows where I belong. Everybody wants to say I’m not available for them. But it’s okay. It keeps the shit films at bay.”

The walrus moustaches and safari suits have morphed into a Prada brigade ripe and ready for Mumbai’s metrosexual matinees. Despite the criticism that the movie industry in Chennai and Hyderabad is run like a mom and pop store, fact remains that most of these actors have tried to boogey out of the pigeonholes of their legacies. Here’s then looking at some of the southern stars who could make that vital statement to our movies.