Suhas is officially the hardest working bloke in Tollywood at the moment - just off the back of a string of February blockbusters, this guy is back at it with Shivani Nagaram on Hey Bhagawan. Don’t let the goofy posters lead you astray. The team is actually playing a pretty high stakes game with the audience. When they launched the "Not a Trailer" event in Hyderabad yesterday, backed by Suhas's good mate Sai Durga Tej, it became pretty clear the makers are betting big time on a secret they refuse to spill the beans about.
This whole marketing campaign is a right cheeky dare, really. Vamsi Nandipati and Bunny Vas are so confident in the film’s "mystery business" angle that they’ve put a ₹20,000 price tag on the table for the top five fans who can actually figure out what Naresh’s character does for a living. The trailer–or as we're calling it, the anti-trailer–gives us a sneaky look at a son trying to modernise his family trade, which apparently his father-in-law finds far too dodgy to stomach. Sounds like a pretty clever pivot from Suhas’s usual gritty roles into a full on comedy entertainer to me.
Director Gopi Achara isn’t just relying on Suhas’s wit and charm; he’s also got a safety net of some big name heavy hitters like Vennela Kishore, Sudarshan and Ajay Ghosh – when you’ve got that lot in the same shot, the laughs tend to keep coming. But the real wild card in all of this is Vivek Sagar. His soundtrack is really taking off on YouTube right now and is already giving off that quirky, urban vibe that has been the hallmark of Suhas’s success for a couple of years now.
It’s just one week to go until the February 20th release and the Censor Board has already given the thumbs-up, so the pressure is really on now. If the "secret business" ends up being a damp squib, it could all backfire big time. But if it hits like Ambajipeta Marriage Band did last year, Suhas might just cement his rep as the king of the "small-film-big-buzz" era. Now all eyes are on the pre-release event to see if anyone actually gets their hands on that ₹20,000 prize money.