'Sivaji'...Indian News Channels GO Crazy!

Rajnikanth! Just spell the name and be sure, there will be a big fanfare around you! Of course this is the quite common scene in Tamil Nadu and some pockets of South India. Of course, Rajni is a person with such popular stature, so nothing to be surprised! However, what took me over surprise is the media coverage provided for the 'Sivaji' movie across the country on the day of release. Everyone just go awe and amazed with the LIVE coverage on ALL the leading Indian News channels - all day today (15th June). One leading TV journalist even went up to an extent of going into the Theatre and reporting from there with fan-filled crowds with the backdrop of 'Sivaji' movie running!

Why this craze? 'Sivaji' is just another movie of Rajnikanth but has got ALL the big names together for this movie like AVM (producer), Shankar (Director), AR Rahman (Music Director), KV Anand (Cinematographer), Thotta Tharani (Art Director) to name the few. You can't imagine such a team for any movie where ONLY the BEST is there! I believe this could be a reason for such a wwwwiiiiiiiiddddddeeeeeee LIVE news coverage by ALL the news channel across the country. Another possible reason could be is that 'Sivaji' is the first movie to be produced at a cost of Rs.80 crores (800 Million Rupees) in the history of Indian Cinema! However, I don't know if there was any such movie (including Amitabh starer) in the Indian cinema history which enjoyed SUCH a wide coverage of live telecast and publicity.

One thing apparent out of such coverage is that the south Indian cinema is far-reaching and pulling viewers of even non-Tamil speaking (rather understand) to watch South Indian cinema. Of course 'Sivaji' is a big milestone for Indian cinema (on many aspects like - Commercial and reaching wide-range of viewers) and a big mileage for South Indian Cinemas to inform the global cinema crowd that Bollywood movie is not just Hindi movies, but also Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam movies. Perhaps Rajni movies are watched by people in Japan, and Malaysia, but this film is sure to pull a mass of non-tamil speaking Indians to watch 'Sivaji'.

As one of the 'Sivaji's' super-hit song lyrics go, If Rajini is there, Yellame Style Thaan (everything is a style) !!!