Premaloka

Cast

Production

The film marked the directorial debut of V. Ravichandran. For the lead actress, Ravichandran rejected 52 girls before choosing Juhi Chawla as the heroine. Apart from composing music, Hamsalekha has also written lyrics for all songs and dialogues for the film. When Ravichandran was mulling over the theme of the film, Hamsalekha suggested him to do a musical script on the lines of Sound of Music and Grease 2.

Vishnuvardhan, Ambarish and Tiger Prabhakar made guest appearances in the film. Jolly Bustin who went on to become a stunt master worked as a body double for Ravichandran.

Soundtrack

Hamsalekha composed the music for the film and also penned the lyrics for the soundtrack. The soundtrack album consists of eleven tracks. The distribution rights were bought by Lahari Music for a hitherto record price of ₹150,000.

The music and the songs in the film were widely appreciated and created records in the audio cassette sales during the time. Tulsiram Naidu (Lahari Velu) of Lahari Audio, says, "Premaloka continues to be the biggest hit among film music albums in Kannada cinema. Back then audio rights were sold for a pittance and nominally paid ₹100 or ₹1,000. With Premaloka things changed and rights began to be sold in lakhs". The lyrics of the soundtrack also received acclaim from critics.

Box-office

The first few days of the film was bad at the box office. In fact, for the first three weeks, the film was considered a flop. But slowly, the film gained due to word-of-mouth publicity and repeat crowds. From the second month onwards, the film started getting houseful shows. The film rewrote history books and skyrocketed the careers of Ravichandran and Hamsalekha.

Legacy

One of the songs, "Nodamma Hudugi," was reused by Sundeep Malani for his Kanglish film SMS 6260 featuring Diganth, Kiran, Janu. Hamsalekha would go on to compose music for many more Ravichandran films.

Premaloka was dubbed in Tamil as Paruva Ragam and in Telugu as Premalokam. Juhi Chawla recalling her experiences stated that "My 45-day shoot for Premaloka ensured that going on the set of Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak was a cakewalk. The other good thing about Premaloka was that the team was young, so it was like college buddies hanging out. [..] Since the film was a musical, it was like a party on the set. The only senior person there was our cinematographer. I fondly look back at my stint in Kannada cinema during my early days as the foundation for my career in Bollywood".