Pushpa, Pushpa, Pushpa Raj! and Fire nahi wildfire hai!. These lines ruled the Instagram and Facebook feeds of Indians for the two months that Allu Arjun's latest film Pushpa 2: The Rule caused a rampage at the box office. Not just this, these lines also made it to the meme pages on X (formerly Twitter).
But what led to the movie and Pushpa Raj becoming so popular? Telugu superstar Nagarjuna decoded the phenomenon that was Pushpa 2 and Pushpa Raj in an exclusive interview with Business Today on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Akkineni family-owned film production and distribution company Annapurna Studios.
The actor-producer said that Pushpa Raj has become sort of a "superhero character" and an iconic character of sorts. Due to this, the character became widely popular on social media.
"Pushpa Raj has become a character, superhero character, and now it's become very, very iconic character. Yeah, it's featuring in memes and, you know, all these spoof accounts everywhere. It's made its way. So it's not the story it's become a character now," Nagarjuna said.
When asked how will Annapurna Studios decide which film deserves country-wide distribution and which does not, he mentioned that Pushpa 2 and other pan-India releases that did well worked with the audiences because the makers were true to the film's story.
"I made a Telugu film to to its story, whether it's Pushpa or anything of the recent ones, and that struck a chord because I most of the time even though I'm talking in English to you I'm thinking in my mind. So this is, this comes from the DNA you're born, brought up here, so even the directors are like that. I think if RRR it was done purely as a Telugu film."
He added that Ajay Devgn's involvement in Rajamouli's RRR was another reason that it did well in the North Indian belt. He said that the Telugu-speaking audience accepts any good film, be it a Kantara or a RRR or something by Marvel.
Allu Arjun and Rashmika Mandanna-starrer Pushpa 2 did phenomenal numbers at the box office. The film raked in a total of ₹1,234.1 crore in terms of its India net box office collections and ₹1,742.1 crore in terms of its worldwide box office numbers, as per film trade portal Sacnilk.