While actors are usually known to make their money even if their film flops, Rajnikanth is the only one who's known to make good the distributors' losses.
The Chennai-based superstar who last compensated distributors who faced losses on his film Kuselan, is doing it once again.
This time for daughter Aishwaryaa and son-in-law Dhanush's film 3. Probably because Andhra based distributor Natty Kumar, who invested about Rs 6 crore on the dubbed Telugu version, had a panic attack when the movie tanked.
Money matters
A well-placed trade source tells us that Natty bought the rights of the Telugu version for over Rs 4 crore after the song Kolaveri Di became a huge hit.
However, the film flopped big-time incurring major losses to the distributor. He was quoted in the local newspapers saying, "I secured the distribution rights of the Telugu version of 3 for a whopping sum of Rs 4.3 crores, though I was aware that Dhanush's market in Andhra Pradesh wasn't more than Rs 10 lakhs. Even my friends criticised me for risking such a huge sum on the film.
I did so as I had huge faith in the family members of superstar Rajnikanth. I felt Aishwaryaa's debut directorial venture would do well in Andhra Pradesh." Needless to say, Rajnikanth is not too happy with these developments.
Daddy cool
According to our source, "Natty's comments on Aishwaryaa and Dhanush haven't gone down too well with Rajni sir. Since he has always taken care of his distributors, Rajni sir and Aishwaryaa have conveyed to Natty that they would compensate his losses too."
Natty even went on record blaming the indifferent attitudes of actors Dhanush, Shruti Haasan and director Aishwaryaa for the film's failure. The producer-distributor who spent over a crore on marketing the film has been quoted saying, "Dhanush and Aishwaryaa didn't keep their promise to visit Hyderabad on April 1 for promotions.
Besides, they didn't attend the film's premiere show, which disappointed me even more. I have incurred huge losses because of the film's poor showing." We tried contacting Dhanush and Natty. But neither of them were available for comment.
