The top actors of India routinely charge Rs 100 crore or more per film these days. Add to it the profit share and at times, a star’s earnings from a film can balloon up to over Rs 250 crore. But these numbers weren’t always this high. In fact, just three decades ago, not many could even demand Rs 1 crore, let alone a hundred. All that changed in 1992 and it was a telugu superstar who broke that barrier.
Chiranjeevi: Bigger than Bachchan
Bigger than Bachchan: this was the headline of the September 1992 edition of Stardust magazine with Chiranjeevi’s face at the front and centre. The reason was that the actor had just become the highest-paid actor in India, charging a whopping Rs 1.25 crore for the Telugu film Aapadbandhavudu. The K Viswanath film released later that year to a resounding success. In this process, Chiranjeevi surpassed Amitabh Bachchan, who was reportedly charging Rs 85-90 lakh per film in those days.
The growing Rs 1-crore club
Tamil superstar Kamal Haasan joined the 1-crore club in a few years when he charged around Rs 1 crore in 1994. Rajinikanth joined the fray soon enough. When Amitabh Bachchan returned to acting after his sabbatical in 1995, he also began charging over a crore per film. Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan, the new generation heroes, also reached the figure by the late-90s. Reportedly, Chiranjeevi’s Telugu contemporaries Nagarjuna and Venkatesh were also charging over a crore each per fil, by the late-1990s.
Why is Chiranjeevi called the megastar?
Like his contemporaries Nagarjuna and Venkatesh, Chiranjeevi too attempted a crossover to Bollywood. But despite the succes, he was content reigning in the Telugu film industry. The actor delivered back-to-back superhits in the 90s and was,virtually, the undisputed king of Telugu filmdom. This dominance earned him the moniker of ‘Megastar’, to differentiate him from other ‘superstars’ in the fray. After a career lull in the 2000s and an 8-year hiatus, the megastar returned with Khaidi No 150, and followed it up with blockbusters like Sye Raa Narasimha Reddy, GodFather, and Waltair Veerayya. While not quite the same dominant force as before, he is still one of the biggest names in Telugu film industry and charges around Rs 45 crore per film.
