Kandireega

Plot

Sreenu (Ram) is the son of Vishwanatham (Chandra Mohan). He is a high school drop-out in Anakapalle and wants to marry his uncle's (Dharmavarapu Subramanyam) daughter Bujji (Swati Reddy). She rejects him stating that he doesn’t have basic college education. Sreenu, who is clever and street-smart decides to go to Hyderabad for further education. While travelling in the train, he bashes up a bunch of rowdies teasing college girls. At the college in Hyderabad, he meets Shruthi (Hansika Motwani) and falls in love with her. The city gangster Bhavani (Sonu Sood) is in love with her and blackmails her to marry him. He beats anyone moving closely with Shruthi. Meanwhile, henchmen of Warangal Rajanna (Jaya Prakash Reddy), a dreaded chieftain, are looking for Sreenu in the city.

Sreenu meets Bhavani and forces him to a challenge, whereby, he will make Shruthi love him. Sreenu rescues Shruthi from being kidnapped by the gang of Yadayya, a rival of Bhavani. When Sreenu wins Shruthi's heart and both of them decide to elope, she is kidnapped.

It is then revealed that Rajanna kidnapped Shruthi to get hold of Sreenu because Rajanna's daughter Sandhya (Aksha Pardasany) is in love with Sreenu. She was the girl who was saved by Sreenu on the train. Sreenu lands at Rajanna's place and finds himself in a fix. Bhavani, too, arrives at Rajanna's place to take away Shruthi. A police intelligence officer Avataram(Raghu Babu), Rajanna's brother-in-law, comes to attend Sreenu and Sandhya's wedding. Sreenu and Bhavani start their one-upmanship games to win Shruthi.

How Sreenu comes out of this quagmire to rescue Shruthi from the clutches of Rajanna and Bhavani and what happens to Sandhya are revealed in the climax interspersed with twists and turns.

Cast

Production

This film was initially announced in October 2009 with Ravi Teja playing the lead role and with Krishna Vamsi as director, with the producer announcing the film as a partly fantasy venture. The film progressed in pre-production with Tamannaah Bhatia and Sneha Ullal being considered to portray the heroine role, whilst the fantasy elements in the original script were removed. In April 2010, it was revealed that the producer and Ravi Teja had fallen out and he was replaced by Ram. Thetfilming began in October 2010 with Ram and Hansika Motwani, whilst actress Swati Reddy shot scenes the following month. Ram stated on his Twitter account that the film had three female lead roles, and suggested that Nisha Aggarwal was signed on.

During the first schedule, events on the set of the film became the reason for the Telugu film industry strikes of 2010 after Telugu film fighters attacked Tamil film technicians in Chennai on the sets of the film in December 2009. Enraged by this, producers called for a bandh the next day. However, film workers declared a strike immediately after that for an indefinite period. The crisis affected the whole film industry and no films were shot in Andhra Pradesh during late December and early January during negotiations.

After filming had resumed, the original music director Chakri was replaced by S. Thaman in March 2011.

Soundtrack

Kandireega audio was launched at Taj Deccan in Hyderabad on 14 July 2011. Senior actor Venkatesh was the Chief guest at the audio launch. Dharmavarapu Subramaniam, hero Gopichand, producer Bellamkonda Suresh, director of the film Santosh Srinivas, senior director V V Vinayak, music composer S S Thaman, actress Aksha, Sravanti Ravikishore etc. all were present at the grand audio launch.

Reception

The film received positive reviews from all central critics.

Box office

The film was released on August 12, 2011 and on its first day, it collected a total of 2 crores. In its worldwide release it collected a total of 10.61 crores. The film was declared a 'Blockbuster' at the box office.

Sequel

After the film's success, a sequel titled Kandireega-2 was planned. Ram again will be playing the lead role. However, it was later decided that Ram will be replaced with N. T. Rama Rao Jr. Afterwards, plans for a sequel have been shelved so Santosh Srinivas instead decided to work with Jr. NTR on the film Rabhasa.

Remakes

Reportedly the Hindi remake rights of the film were sold to Ekta Kapoor of Balaji Motion Pictures for ₹ 20 million which has Varun Dhawan in lead, directed by his father David Dhawan. The film was named Main Tera Hero.This film was also remade in Bengali as Paglu 2 starring Dev and Koel Mallick directed by Sujit Mondal.