The Raja Saab has collapsed on the second Monday at the box office. The Sankranthi festival window helped the film get some overflows from other films running to their full capacity.
But on Monday, Raja Saab crashed completely. The film will struggle to reach 200 crores worldwide gross from here, according to trade experts.
Prabhas getting exposed and brutally trolled for The Raja Saab is not random social media noise. When a star with arguably the biggest pan India market becomes meme material, something has gone seriously wrong. This is not the first time either. It happened earlier with many of his films post-Baahubali.
The common thread in all these failures is not just weak scripts. It is the mismatch between Prabhas' stature and the directors handling him.
Take Saaho. Sujeeth was coming off Run Raja Run, but he was nowhere near ready to control a star of Prabhas' scale. The result was a confused and overlong film with sloppy storytelling, despite a massive budget and years of shooting. Sujeeth also wasted Prabhas' presence with poor VFX and over the top action scenes.
Then came Radhe Shyam. Director Radha Krishna turned what should have been a grand romantic drama into a painfully flat film. Adipurush was worse. Om Raut had delivered Tanhaji, but he was never a proven big star director. That gamble ended in national level embarrassment, turning Prabhas into troll content across languages.
Now The Raja Saab has taken the damage even further. Maruthi's recent track record itself has been extremely poor, and it came as a rude shock to many when Prabhas went to Maruthi and asked him to direct a film for him.
Even tier 2 heroes hesitate to work with him today. Yet Prabhas trusted him with a pan India project. The result was a film that did not just fail. It exposed Prabhas like never before. This turned out to be an extremely bad film even by Maruthi's standards. It was a masterclass in how not to present a superstar.
After Baahubali, Prabhas had the world at his feet. But he chose directors like Sujeeth, Radha Krishna, Om Raut, and Maruthi. The hope now rests on Spirit. Sandeep Reddy Vanga is a credible and strong director who understands how to present a superstar. If anyone can rebuild Prabhas' image, it is someone like him. But is one Spirit enough to control the damage done by Raja Saab?
But the larger lesson is clear. Prabhas can no longer afford experiments with directors who lack the scale, vision, and authority to handle him.