Ramgopal Verma heading to Tollywood for a bailout

At a time when his name has become synonymous with the biggest flops in the industry, Ram Gopal Varma seems to have no support from Bollywood. And as a last resort, the director was forced to head homewards finally, with the hope of banking on good old friend Suresh Babu’s help for his latest venture Rann. Sources confirm that all the big players turned RGV down before he headed to his Tollywood friend for support. “After the Reliance deal didn’t work out, Amitabh Bachchan’s company AB Corp also pulled out of their offer to co-produce the film,” says a source at RGV’s office. There were also rumours that Sony Pictures India were in talks with the director for the movie. But nothing materialised.

Ramu himself is on the defensive about the whole issue and claims he is working with Suresh Babu because they “always wanted to do something together.” “The news on it not working out with Big is not true. It was my choice to work with Suresh as we knew each other since long and have been planning to do something together and we both felt this is the right project,” Ramu insisted in an SMS. “It is true that Ram gopal Varma and I will work together on the Hindi film Rann. The schedule and the casting will be finalised in a week’s time. However, it is not true that Big entertainment and AB corp have backed out from this project. He must have approached a lot of people for many other scripts, but not this one. I know Ramu for a long time and we have made films together. We zeroed in on the Rann script as we found it interesting. I wanted to do Bollywood films, I was just waiting for the right movie,” said Suresh Babu.