Senior filmmaker Gunasekhar made a mythological drama titled ‘Shaakunthalam’ with Samantha playing the title role. This movie which came out on 14th April did not impress the audience at all. Along with Gunasekhar, Dil Raju produced the film and they specially converted it to 3D during the post-production stage. They spent a lot on the 3D version and Dil Raju sounded highly confident during the promotions. He would have expected that the summer season and Samantha’s craze would bring him huge collections.
In reality, the movie ended up as a huge disaster which resulted in heavy losses for Dil Raju. Reacting about it in a recent interview, the star producer and distributor revealed that ‘Shaakunthalam’ gave him a big blow that he did not face in twenty-five years. As a producer and distributor, Dil Raju would have seen many failures but referring to ‘Shaakunthalam’ as a huge blow shows how big of an effect it had on him and his banner.
Gunasekhar who endured financial troubles due to ‘Rudhramadevi’ back in 2015 has got a huge relief in the form of Dil Raju now. It was the ‘Bommarillu’ producer who looked after the financial affairs for ‘Shaakunthalam’. He spent heavily on the movie but the audience showed zero interest in watching the love story of Shakuntala and Dushyanta on the big screen. It got a negative response on the very first day and the collections went downhill immediately. It looks like Dil Raju has had a big setback after getting good profits as a distributor with ‘Dasara’.