Kuselan tracks gold

28 Jun 2008, 0025 hrs IST, Sreedhar Pillai,TNN


The Real KUSELAN: Rajinikanth
Rajinikanth has once again proved that he is the real superstar of Kollywood.

The audio of Kuselan has been sold for a whopping Rs 2.25 crore by its producers to Big Music. It is the highest price ever paid for a Tamil film by an audio company.

The official audio launch will take place on Monday at a suburban five-star hotel in Chennai. Rajinikanth and the rest of the Kuselan team including Nayanthara, Pasupathy, Vadivel, Meena, director P Vasu, producer K Balachandar and music director G V Prakash will attend the function. The buzz is that the chief guest at the function will be Prakash's uncle and mentor A R Rahman.

The mere name Rajinikanth, spells magic not only at the box-office but also in sale of audios. The audio company is coming out with two lakhs CD's (Rs 99) and cassettes (Rs 45) of the film, which will be on sale from July 1 morning in all music outlets worldwide. Says a beaming Umesh Pai, General Manager South, Big Music, "Never before in the history of Tamil audio has two lakh CD's and cassettes been available in the market on the opening day. There is already an order for 1.15 units from the dealers. We are expecting it to beat all sales records once the film is released. The company is also reported to be spending another Rs 30 lakhs towards promotions and merchandising of the album. In addition to that, the digital downloads of the songs in the film has been sold by the audio company.

The previous highest selling audio according to industry estimates was Rajnikanth's Sivaji, which had music by A R Rahman and is reported to have sold nearly 4 lakh CD's and cassettes.

How is it possible for an audio of a Tamil film to get such a high price at a time when the audio industry is in doldrums and there is rampant piracy? "Just the name attached to the label, Rajinikanth is the selling point of the album.

G V Prakash's last album sold for Rs 20 lakhs, today the market for a film's audio rights depends very much on the hero of the film," says an audio industry spokesman.

The producers of Kuselan, Kavithalayaa and Seven Arts Films are marketing it as a full fledged Rajinikanth extravaganza. At the movie launch, the superstar said that he appears in 25 percent of the film however, director P Vasu claims that Rajinikanth, who is doing a special appearance has one-hour of screen time of the film's approximately 2 hours 40 minutes running time. Kuselan is a remake of the Malayalam blockbuster Katha Parayumbol.

The superstar will feature in three of the five songs in the film. His introduction song Cinema, Cinema, sung by Shankar Mahadevan will feature more than a dozen Kollywood stars who will join the superstar in celebrating 75 years of the South Indian film industry. Another highlight is the seven-minute song Om Zaarare sung by Daler Mehendi, Chitra and Sadhana Sargam and features Rajinikanth and Nayanthara. Pasupathy and Meena, the hero and heroine of the film, seem to be sidelined and will feature in one song and briefly appear in another.


http://timesofindia .indiatimes. com/Entertainmen t/India_Buzz/ Kuselan_tracks_ gold/articleshow /3175486. cms