Shankar arrived on the scene with "Gentleman". Followed it up with "Kadhalan", "Indian", "Jeans", "Mudhalvan", "Boys" and "Anniyan". Each one of them is a blockbuster in its own right. And maybe when the collections from all these movies are aggregated together they might equal the collections of his last movie "Sivaji". It was the Rajnikanth factor that made the movie bigger than it probably deserved. Superstar Rajni, as he is affectionately called by his fans, can make ordinary films into a one-film-industry.

The rumors are that the collections of "Sivaji" have crossed Rs. 250 crores whereas the highest grossing Indian movie was somewhere near the Rs. 100 crore mark and that too was a Superstar Rajni movie. The nearest in collections by a non-Rajni movie was Rs. 60 crore. Imagine a single man churning out two movies that combine for revenues of about Rs. 350 crores. There are lot of companies with hundreds of people trying hard to generate that kind of revenue per year. Here, you have one man single-handedly ensuring that the movie will attain blockbuster status.

And people ask me why does it make front page news whenever he signs a new movie, ha!

Rajni and Shankar are coming together for the second time. And they again have the legend A R Rahman with them in this as well. This means the expectations for a movie bigger than "Sivaji", however unrealistic, will be there. I consider myself as a rational person, but deep inside I want "Robot" to be bigger than "Sivaji".

SRK and Shankar apparently had creative differences over the script of the movie and the way it was to be executed. Shankar did not wait till Aamir could give him a concrete reply. He went directly to Superstar and narrated the script to him. Superstar agreed and is ready to shoot from June for "Robot". I am not sure if A R Rahman can have his music up and running by June. Shankar generally shoots his songs first up and then concentrates on the story. That's because his strategy is to spend most of his energies where he is going to spend most of his money ;)
Just being a little nasty there. I hope this time he focuses on getting the concept across to the public in the most hard hitting fashion that only he can.

With Rajni, A R Rahman and the rest of the "Sivaji" team, we already have a winner on our hands. I am just imagining if there was a stock market of our films. The moment a Superstar Rajni film is announced the IPO of the film would be oversubscribed by some 200+ times. And by the time the collections come in and the film has run its usual housefull for 2+ years, we would have a bunch of local crorepatis sitting in Chennai! :)