In 1991, two leading South Indian stars – Akkineni Nagarjuna and Rajinikanth — surprisingly played the same role in different languages of a film. The film was ‘Shanti Kranti’, a big budget action crime drama made simultaneously in Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam. V. Ravichandran he wrote, directed and produced the ambitious project. The Kannada version starred Nagarjuna in Telugu and Rajinikanth in Tamil and Hindi. The film is also available to stream on Prime Video and YouTube.
Ambitious multilingual project
‘Shanti Kranti’ was one of the most expensive South Indian films of its time. Ravichandran wanted to tell a story about children and the organ transplant mafia.As reported by OTT Play, it erected huge sets, including a playback at Bengaluru’s MG Road for the climax. Crews, cars and catering teams were arranged for each language version.
which was revealed by S. Narayan
Actor-director S. Narayan later spoke about the scale of the project in an interview. As quoted by OTT Play, he said, “Had Shanti Kranti succeeded at the box office, our industry would have been in a different place.”He added details about the grand arrangements: “Crew members would wear tags like ‘Shanti Kranti, Kannada, Manager’ and the catering team would wear gloves like in a star hotel. You wouldn’t see such an arrangement.”
Nagarjuna and Rajinikanth played the same role
In the Kannada version, V. Ravichandran played Inspector Subhash. Nagarjuna essayed the same role in Telugu, while Rajinikanth essayed it in Tamil and Hindi.Juhi Chawla, Khushbu and Anant Nag appeared in all versions. Rajinikanth initially declined the offer, but after hearing Ravichandran’s full story, he accepted.
Box office failure and personal setback
Despite the huge effort and budget, ‘Shanti Kranti’ failed to recover its cost at the box office. The film’s commercial failure came at a difficult time for Ravichandran.His father, the legendary producer N. Veeraswamy, was bedridden and the family was facing financial problems. The grand vision of the project could not bring success.
The reunion of Nagarjuna and Rajinikanth after many years
Nagarjuna and Rajinikanth did not share screen space again for decades. Finally, a few years later, they came together in the recently released film ‘Coolie’. In the Lokesh Kanagaraj directorial, Nagarjuna played a villainous character opposite Rajinikanth.
