Months after its theatrical run, RRR continues to further expand its audience. The action drama that was the source of hype worldwide was released on the streaming platform Netflix late in May. Since then, the film has not only been a massive success, but has bulldozed up to Netflix’s top 10 — making RRR the number 1 most-watched non-English film on Netflix!
If you’re wondering what the big hype is around this film, here’s a rundown. RRR is a fictional story about the lives of two Indian revolutionaries in 1920. The film stars Ram Charam as Alluri Sitarama Raju and N.T. Rama Rao Jr as Komaram Bheem and follows them through an undocumented portion of their lives leading up to their decision to fight for their country against the British Raj. The film is directed by S.S. Rajamouli, who also co-wrote the movie with V. Vijayendra Prasad. The trailer for the film can be viewed below.
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RRR would premiere on March 25th, 2022, to worldwide success. The film broke the record for the highest opening-day earned by an Indian movie at $31 million dollars. The film would continue to climb in infamy, with much of the expansion in overseas countries through word of mouth. The film went on to gross $150 million worldwide.
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After such success at the box office, when it was time for streaming, there was a bit of a split. Currently, RRR is now available on Netflix in the United States, but the kicker is that it is the Hindi version rather than the original Telugu. This hasn’t hindered the movie in any way, it seems, as audiences are still tuning in! In fact, they’ve enjoyed 18.35 million hours of it! That’s right, according to Netflix, the film has been watched for that long collectively by viewers between the span of May 23rd to May 29th. This is an unspeakable feat for a non-English movie! If you’re still interested in finding the movie in its original Telugu, the streaming service Zee5 has your back. They have the global distribution rights for the film in Telugu, Malayalam, Tamil, and Kannada with English subtitles.
As the success of RRR continues to climb, perhaps this can be a testament to word-of-mouth as part of a film’s success. With Netflix giving the film a wider audience outside of India, more viewers from around the world can take in the larger-than-life action. As for Rajamouli, the question now is whether or not he’d like to continue the adventures of Raju and Bheem. According to the New Indian Express, Rajamouli says that their story is done.
But while Rajamouli is done with the film, Prasad has said otherwise. According to Variety, the co-writer expressed that he would be interested in returning to the characters again. For him, the possibility of a sequel is not entirely out of range.
“There won’t be a sequel to RRR and I have no plans to make it a franchise.”
For now, there’s only one direction for RRR to go, and that is forward. With franchises taking over at the box office, it’s great to see a fresh blockbuster drink a bit of that success once in a while.
“I’ve used the word franchise thinking, hoping that there would be another world of ‘RRR’ again. Sometimes you just hope and you say a few words hoping it would happen, it will happen. It’s just a way of positive thinking, wanting for more.”
