‘All the roads lead to Rome’ is an old proverb. ‘All the people’s and the media’s attention is only on Rajinikanth’s Sivaji is the new proverb in south Indian cinema. This is no exaggeration.The entire state of Tamil Nadu is going crazy about Sivaji after the audio launch of the film. Young boys and college students have been seen changing their hairstyles like Rajini’s in the film immediately after the release of some photographs from Shivaji.
Many ardent fans of Rajini purchased the CDs and cassettes with their own money and supplied them to their neighbours free of cost! At the same time, some people sold the CDs in black market for Rs.250 today as the demand was greater than the supply. Nearly 80,000 CDs got sold out on the second day, and the sellers have requested the production house to send another 1 lakh CDs to meet the increasing demand. According to the ‘Music World’ show room manager, people are prefering to purchase CDs rather than cassettes. He told us that he has seen more crowd today than on Monday when the audio was formally launched. AVM sources say that its audio distribution wing has supplied nearly 5 lakhs audio CDs and cassettes all over south India. They also say that there is an amazing response for the audio in Mumbai as well. According to them, more than 38 thousand audio CDs were sold in Kerala only. This is for the very first time that an audio in a different language has sold in the state in such a huge number, they claimed.
CD Sellers of Chennai Ritchie Street, the whole sale audio marketers for the entire south, told us that they had never seen such a high demand for a film’s audio in the past 25 years. Pradeep of Supreme audio said, “On Monday, I opened my shop at 5 in the morning. When I reached there, there was a long queue waiting to purchase the Sivaji audio in front my two shops. It was quite unbelievable. One person, who had come there with a mini CD player, listened to the songs on the spot. He distributed sweets to the gathering there immediately after he felt satisfied with the Sivaji songs. This is really amazing, and I have never experienced any thing like it. The whowle country hasnt experienced anything like this. The super star has breathed a new life into the audio market through his film Shivaji. There is no doubt that Rajini has always ruled southern cinema and he is the real super star in the country!” Probably going withe present hype, AVM Productions has plans to bring out a short film about the making of the film. No other Indian film has created so much hype like Sivaji has done in India or abroad. This film will be an unforgettable one for its producer AVM Saravanan, who is going to complete his 50th anniversary in film production. Before Shivaji, he has worked with the Superstar in 8 films. Before this, none of his films have made excited him so much neither has any of his films made him as proud as Sivaji has.
In fact Shivaji, alias Rajini, has given a new life to the legendary production house on its 70th anniversary. Before the announcement of Shivaji, there was distribution of the ownership rights of the AVM Studios between the AVM brothers. AVM Saravanan got a lesser portion of the Studio premises. At this critical situation, he gave away the entire rights of the Tamil films produced under AVM banner to his younger brother AVM. Balasubramanian. At a time when Saravanan was planning for some other projects to survive in the industry, Rajini came forward to allot his prestigious call sheets. He recommended Shankar’s name to direct Shivaji. After the formal announcement of this project, the entire industry was up and about. There are hundreds and thousands of news, gossips, and debates doing the rounds about this film in the media, as well as the public. It is Shivaji, which has kept online journalists always in alert. For the first time in the world, some of the portals ‘released’ the complete songs of the movie with lyric notes online. But the curiosity for this film hasn’t faded due to this leak. Infact, it has helped a lot in the film’s overseas popularity, in a different way. Keeping all these facts in mind, AVM Saravanan has asked the director to shoot a film on the making of Shivaji, simultaneously with the film. This film might feature all the stars including the ‘King of Southern Cinema’ Rajini and the director Shankar. Other technicians, including the incredible A.R. Rahman, cameraman, lyricists, dance masters, stunt masters…will share their unforgettable moments of association with Rajini and the film, Shivaji, in this curtain-raiser. The crew has titled this as ‘Making of Sivaji – The Boss’ and it will be of one hour in length.
The CD and DVD of this short film will be circulated to the press at the time of Sivaji preview. AVM has planned to circulate the CDs to the outlets for sale, a after few days of the release of the film.