This Sankranti has been cheery for the Telugu film industry. Two big-budget films, Khaidi No. 150 and Gauthamiputra Satakarni (GPSK), have raked in about ₹80 crore on the first day of their release.

Though both films have been declared hits, it’s GPSK that has won more hearts, with film critics and cine-goers giving it a thumbs up. The film is based on the exploits of Gauthamiputra Sathakarni, the emperor from the South who won several wars in the second century AD.

Chiranjeevi’s film, released on January 11 in over 2,000 screens across the world, has collected ₹47 crore, including ₹30 crore from the two Telugu-speaking States of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The US market contributed ₹9 crore, followed by ₹5 crore from Karnataka. This is highest first-day collection for any Telugu film so far.

“There was a huge excitement in the Telugu States and among the diaspora over Chiranjeevi’s re-entry into the films after a gap of 10 years,” Allu Arvind, film producer and Chiranjeevi’s brother-in-law, said while announcing the break-up of first-day collections.

The collections saw a drop on the second day to ₹18-20 crore as the number of screens showing the film halved to 1,000. This was because GPSK was released a day later in over 1,000 screens. Industry sources put the collections for this film on day one at ₹25-30 crore.

While Chiranjeevi chose to go for a remake of Tamil film Kaththi, a Vijay-starrer, for his 150th film, Balakrishna picked the Gauthamiputra Sathakarni saga as the theme for his 100th film.

Like their peers in Bollywood and Kollywood, Telugu film producers and actors have been focussing on the first one week collections to beat piracy.

They, however, take care in spacing out the release of big films. This time around, the two stars had announced the release dates at the beginning of the shooting itself, generating huge interest since.

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