SS Rajamouli’s son Karthikeya reacts to rumours of RRR team buying Oscar, paying to be part of ceremony

Filmmaker SS Rajamouli’s son SS Karthikeya opened up in a latest interview and shed some light on whether the RRR team allegedly spent ₹80 crore on its Oscar campaign. He went on to confirm that the team did actually spend in crores, however, it was nowhere close to the speculated amount in several reports. (Also Read | RRR turns 1: SS Rajamouli's son recalls ‘365 days of uninterrupted celebrations’, shares how Naatu Naatu was shot)

Ever since the return of team RRR from the Academy Awards, reports have been making the rounds that they spent a whopping ₹80 crore on the Oscar campaign. RRR's song Naatu Naatu won the Academy Award in the Best Original Song category.

In an interview with Galatta Plus, Karthikeya clarified that they didn’t spend such big bucks. “We wanted to wrap up things in ₹5 crore. That was the plan but we ended up spending ₹8.5 crore for the campaign. Special screenings were arranged in a couple of cities in the USA for RRR. We thought we need more shows in New York where we were lagging behind,” Karthikeya said.

He explained that a large chunk of money is spent on such screenings where the voters are usually invited. Addressing the whole theory about buying the Oscar and paying $2500 to be part of the ceremony, Karthikeya said, “People like Ram Charan, Jr NTR, Prem Rakshit, Kaala Bhairava, Rahul Sipligunj, Keeravani and Chandrabose were officially invited. Each of these nominees have a few seats which they can accommodate for people they’d like to bring. But they have to send out a mail to the Academy and tell them who they’re bringing along. So there are classes of seats and they have to be paid for. We paid around $1500 per seat in the lower level and $750 per seat for the top level. That’s about it.”

He further added that an 'Oscar can’t be bought, people’s love can’t be bought'. He also added that people spend on a campaign to get their film noticed. RRR, which earned over ₹1200 crore globally during its theatrical run, is the first Indian production to bag an Oscar for Original Song.

RRR is a fictional story set in the 1920s pre-independent era and is based on the lives of two real heroes and well-known revolutionaries – Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem. While Ram Charan played Ram, Jr NTR was seen as Bheem.