Pictures of Samantha Akkineni’s first-look from the sets of the 96 Telugu remake are doing the rounds. She started shooting for the film last week, soon after the success of Nandini Reddy’s Oh! Baby.
The remake is directed by Prem Kumar, the director of the Tamil original, and produced by Dil Raju’s Sri Venkateshwara Creations. Samantha and Sharwanand will play Jaanu and Ram, characters played by Trisha and Viay Sethupathi in the original. The leaked pictures show Samantha performing with a mic suggesting that she was shooting for the school reunion portion.
Samantha from the sets of Dir Premkumar's Telugu remake of his Tamil hit 96.
Samantha and Sharwanand in lead roles.#96TheMovie pic.twitter.com/jaQR5Rgbh4
— Christopher Kanagaraj (@Chrissuccess) July 22, 2019
The title for the remake is yet to be finalised. Prem Kumar has revealed that apart from a few changes made for the Telugu audience, the film will be a frame-to-frame remake.
It was earlier said that Trisha might play the lead in the remake, and talks were on with actors Rana Daggubati, Nani and others to play the role of Ram.
96, a story about two high school sweethearts meeting after decades during a school reunion, released in October last year, and was a superhit, running for 100 days in some theatres. The film was recently also remade in Kannada as 99 by director Preetham Gubbi with Ganesh and Bhavana in the lead. However, it was not as successful as the Tamil original.
The other cast and crew for the Telugu remake has not yet been revealed. The Tamil film starred Bagavathi Perumal, Devadarshini, Jankaraj, Kaali Venkat and Aadukalam Murugadoss in supporting roles. Music composed by Govind Vasantha was hugely successful as well.
Meanwhile, Samantha’s Oh! Baby has emerged as one of the highest grossing films in her career. It has reportedly earned Rs 38 crore world wide and is inching towards the one million mark in the US. Samantha is also gearing up for Manmadhudu 2, in which she plays a cameo.