RRR’s Oscar expenses: SS Rajamouli’s son SS Karthikeya rubbishes rumours; Reveals the publicity budget

RRR, the magnum opus helmed by SS Rajamouli emerged as the most popular Indian film of 2022, with its big win at various international film awards ceremonies including the Oscars 2023. The 'Naatu Naatu' song from RRR won the Oscar Award for Best Original Song. Thus, the epic drama emerged as the first-ever Indian production film to bag the prestigious honour. Meanwhile, it was reported that the makers of the Ram Charan-Jr NTR starter spent a whopping Rs. 83 Crore for the Oscar campaign of RRR.

SS Rajamouli's SS Karthikeya clears the air

According to the reports published by Hindustan Times, director SS Rajamouli's son SS Karthikeya, who has assisted his father in RRR, has now cleared the air regarding the whopping Oscars campaign budget of the film. The aspiring filmmaker rubbished the reports that suggest the RRR team spent over Rs. 83 Crore for the campaign and revealed that the film indeed had a publicity budget, which was a much lesser amount. 

"I don't know why there is a rumour that the RRR team has spent a lot of money on the Oscars campaign. We definitely wanted to campaign for the Academy Awards, as the audience really liked the film. We had a publicity budget, and we did everything according to the plan," stated Karthikeya. "It is a big joke that we can buy an Oscar Award if we give money. Everything there is done according to a process. Can we buy the love of the fans? We can't buy the words of Steven Spielberg and James Cameron about the movie, can we? The fans have given us a lot of publicity," he added.

RRR's actual Oscars campaign budget

Interestingly, SS Karthikeya also revealed the actual Oscars campaign budget of RRR, in his chat with the media. "In Hollywood, movie makers team up with studios for the Oscar campaign. We didn't have that chance. The planned budget for the campaign was Rs 5 crores. Even that seemed too much to us. We tried to reduce the cost as much as possible. We wanted to spend it in three phases. In the first phase, we spent Rs 3 crores. After the nominations, we increased the budget. We thought it would cost around Rs 5-6 crores for the entire campaign. But finally, it was Rs 8.5 crores," he revealed.

RRR to get a sequel soon

In many of his recent interviews, director SS Rajamouli had confirmed that RRR might get a sequel soon. The team has already come up with an exciting idea for the sequel, and the project is expected to materialise after the filmmaker wraps up his next outing with Mahesh Babu, which is an action-adventure film. 

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