Prasanth Varma’s Telugu film Hanuman became one of the biggest hits of 2024 and now it is heading for a release in Japan this October. In addition, the makers are planning a re-release of the Teja Sajja-starrer in India too. Talking to us, the director reveals, “The international versions of Hanu-Man will be released in 3D, and we are planning to re-release the film in 3D in select screens in India around the same time as the Japanese release as well.”

Discussing how Japan is turning out to be a lucrative market for South films following the success of RRR (2022) and Kalki 2898AD in Japan, he says, “The South Indian sensibilities are very similar to Japanese and Korean sensibilities, and if your film has potential, the Japanese audience will embrace it.”

Explaining why the Japanese market has more demand for South films compared to Hindi, he opines, “Over time, Hindi films have had a heavy influence of the West, and started imitating it, whereas it’s comparably quite less in the South.”

Varma adds that they aren’t dubbing the film instead will release the original audio with Japanese subtitles. “Apparently these days, people are accustomed to watching films in their original language with subtitles. They don’t want to watch the dubbed versions,” he shares.

Hanu-Man emerged a massive box office success in a year that has been quite challenging for Hindi films. Reflecting on it, Varma says, “People today are going to theatres only if the film is good. Ticket pricing plays a major role now as earlier, going to the cinemas didn’t use to be that expensive. One of the main reasons for Hanu-Man working is because we kept the ticket prices very low. The number of people who saw Hanu-Man is actually higher than many big budgeted films and that’s why we got the collection we did — even at low ticket prices. The audience didn’t feel that they’d have to spend a fortune to see it.”

According to Varma, what might work at the box office is “going local”. He suggests, “Don’t try to make films like Hollywood, try telling your own stories. If you look at films like Kantara (2022), even the global audience is embracing them because that’s a story they don’t know. But if you are making a spy film, Hollywood has already made better ones. I would suggest finding stories that are not there elsewhere. Make films with stories that your grandma told you because that works.”