Telugu film producer and distributor Naga Vamsi has openly admitted that the much-anticipated War 2 film with Hrithik Roshan and the Jr. NTR cast did not live up to expectations. During a conversation on Sithara Entertainment’s YouTube channel, Vamsi stated, “The mistake is on their part, but we bore the consequence.” We were not involved in the movie, yet we became the target of trolls. I and my brother NTR had full faith in YRF, but it backfired.”
War 2 was undoubtedly one of the most awaited films of 2025 due to Ayan Mukerji’s direction and Yash Raj Films being the producer. With a budget of ₹400 crores, the movie still managed to collect only ₹364.35 crores at the worldwide box office, which is considerably less than the first film’s (War 1) global collection of ₹475.62 crores.
Telugu Version Struggles at Box Office
The Telugu version of War 2 was distributed by Naga Vamsi in the areas of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, but even with Jr NTR’s participation, it did not manage to win over the audiences. The first day of the Telugu version saw a collection of ₹22.75 crore, which is quite lower than the ₹29 crore done by the Hindi version. The film’s overall collection after being screened for five weeks was only ₹56.74 crore compared to the Hindi release, which was ₹177.59 crore.
The failure of the movie led to a lot of trolling of Vamsi on social media, especially after he had made pre-release predictions asking the fans of Jr NTR to make the Telugu version “a bigger hit than the Hindi original.”
The 2019 Blockbuster Comparison
War, the 2019 film by Siddharth Anand starring Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff, became a worldwide banger with a whopping box office of ₹475.62 crore as opposed to a budget of ₹170 crore. War 2 was considered a bridge to the YRF Spy Universe together with Pathaan and Tiger 3; nevertheless, the public and critics were quite disappointed with the movie, both in terms of reviews and box office returns.
The South Indian film industry changed Bollywood
Vamsi’s remark that the power balance between Bollywood and South films was gradually changing in the most surprising ways. He voiced out on Galatta Plus a year ago, “Before films like RRR, Baahubali, Jawan, and Animal made a difference, Bollywood was just delivering movies for Bandra and Juhu.”
On the other hand, producer Boney Kapoor has maintained that the ‘success’ of cinema is not only a matter of language issue but also the criteria for separating movies into two groups-good and bad. He elaborated, “The barrier here is not the language; it is what is good and what is bad.”
