Entertainment
No star bigger than film’s success: Prabhas
Chennai: The phenomenal success of S.S, Rajamouli’s “Baahubali”, which has emerged as India’s biggest blockbuster, has made its lead actor Prabhas realise something very important — that the success of any film should be attributed to its team and not to the star.
“This success has taught me that a star alone can’t be credited for a film’s success, which is usually achieved by a team. No star is bigger than the success of a film,” Prabhas told in an exclusive interview.
The success of “Baahubali”, according to the 35-year-old actor, belongs to every last member of the team who worked tirelessly to ensure a smooth release.
“Firstly, it’s not easy to make a film on such a grand scale. The bigger challenge nowadays is to take a film to the theatres. In our case, we didn’t face any difficulty in releasing, which was only possible because of meticulous planning and team work,” he said.
Despite appreciations pouring in from all quarters for his performance, Prabhas doesn’t consider himself a national star yet.
“It felt nice when stars like Ranbir Kapoor and Shah Rukh Khan appreciated my performance. Rajinikanth sir called and congratulated me. Such things have never happened before. I’m glad I’m popular, people recognise wherever I go, but it’s too early to be called a national star,” he said.
Released in multiple languages, the film earned over Rs.600 crore at the ticket window and even successfully completed 100 days of run in select theatres in the country last week.
Although Prabhas admits they wanted the film to succeed, he says they never anticipated this kind of response.
“When a film of this scale is made, you want it to be a blockbuster because mere success won’t help the producers recover money. What surprised us the most was that the film did extremely well in Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam too,” said Prabhas, who’d like to thank Rajamouli the most for this success.
“If Rajamouli is the brain and heart of ‘Baahubali’, the producers are its skeleton, holding everything together and the fans are the blood. Rajamouli deserves all the laurels, but he’s so modest that he diverts all of it towards his team,” he said.
“Baahubali” is now gearing up for its television premiere this week in Telugu and Hindi.
“I hope it becomes the most viewed Indian film on television. It’s quite possible as this is not some regular commercial film that you watch once and forget. My cousins, who’ve already watched it a few times, have said that the experience had gotten better with each viewing,” he said, and added it will be the perfect treat for families this Dussehra festival.
The Hindi version of the film will have its world TV premiere on Sunday on Sony Max – after Dussehra on Oct 22.
Prabhas will start shooting for the second part in the instalment from November. Before he goes to the sets, he will muscle up.
“I’ve already started growing my moustache. Since my shoulder surgery, I haven’t been in the best shape as I was advised not to work out. Now that I’m doing much better, I’ll start gymming soon. I weighed around 95 kg in the first part, I have to maintain it and look muscular too,” he said.
Unlike other stars, Prabhas says he’s not under pressure to deliver minimum of two films a year. He spent nearly two years on the first part of the film and may spend another year on part two.
“Even if I was required to spend four years, I’d have happily worked. An opportunity such as this you get once in a lifetime and it’d be stupid to jeopardize it,” he signs off.
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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