Like environmentalists who promote recycling and reusing, Kannada films too seem to have caught on to the practice. A healthy trend or not remains debatable, but reusing of old scripts and titles have caught up.
While the psyche behind this rising trend differs from director to director and producer to producer, the latter film's performance at the box office too does not throw any sensible reason.
Currently, repeating titles has become a common occurrence in Sandalwood and is rising by the year. One look at the latest list of Kannada films released and those in the making, you are bound to get confused and wonder whether the director and actors have run out of creative ideas or are trying to take it easy by using earlier movie titles.
Repetition of titles are considered widely in other languages too, which is mostly used for the affinity they have for some words or with the intention of branding.
Old films like Gandada Gudi, Nagarahavu, Dharma, Godfather, Accident, Minchina Ota and School Master have found fresh release with different stories. A look at the box office performance clearly indicates that a lot of such movies were not able to recreate the same magic of the earlier films.
Fortunately, we also have some creative titles like Govindaya Namaha, Googly and Lucia. Director Pavan Wadeyar, who gives equal importance to his titles as his stories says, "It is definitely the hit formula that encourages a few directors to repeat the same title. Secondly, the new generation that has not seen the old movies might find it interesting. If it is catchy and effective, then it is always in demand. However, according to my observation, movies which have been released with previous titles have never made an impact like the old ones."
Question Pavan if a situation arises, would he repeat an old title, and he says, "Not in the near future. I believe in creating the title while writing the story and would never come up with the title first and then think of the story."
He further adds, "Since there is no copyright for movie titles, after a certain time, it only makes things easier for the present directors to pick up the title."
Anjada Gandu starring Ravichandran and Khushboo was quite a hit at the box office and the songs were quite popular. Now Neenasam Satish wants to create the same craze, taking the title. The movie will be directed by Pradeep Raj.
Brahma Vishnu Maheshwara starring Ambareesh, Ananth Nag and Ravichandra released two decades ago. Now we hear that a movie with the same name has gone on the floors with Anjan Dev, Sunil and Preetham being the new starcast.
Artha, directed by B Suresh, was released ten years ago and now we have another film with the same name in the making starring Shreeki and Shubha Poonja.
Recently we had films like Auto Raja and Tony releasing in a new avatar while there are a couple more in the making.
Though actor Dhananjay is part of Huccha 2, he is firm in his mind not to be part of a movie that has old titles. "Titles can be considered only when it justifies the story and is not based on popularity. I understand that such titles stay in the mind of people and repeating it would definitely attract the audience. But the title loses its value if the film is a disaster. I am also part of Huccha 2, which was earlier made with Sudeep starring in the film. But in this case, the name Huccha is very much necessary like the previous one," he says.