From the time ‘Zanjeer/Thoofan’ got washed out at the box office, a lot of discussion has been happening on the cause for it.

While many have attributed it to director Apoorva Lakhia and the stone expressions of Ram Charan, some are now stating that it is also some guidance error from Chiranjeevi.

Apparently, when south Indian heroes did Bollywood films the directors were from south. Chiru did ‘Pratibandh’ ‘Aaj Ka Gundaraj’ with Raviraja Pinisetti as the director. Nag did ‘Shiva’ with RGV as the director. Venky did ‘Anari’ and it was directed by Muralimohan Rao. All these became decent hits.

But when Chiru did ‘The Gentleman’ with Mahesh it didn’t work. The logic is, south Indian directors have that interest and awareness on south Indian star heroes and are keen on projecting their heroism but Bollywood directors look at him as debutantes and don’t connect that strongly. It is not sure why this funda was not followed with Charan by Chiranjeevi. Getting Apoorva Lakhia was a blunder. If it was a south Indian director then Cherry’s Bollywood debut would have been strong.