CM YS Jagan Birthday Special: YSRCP Govt’s Efforts to Make Vizag Film Hub

Vijayawada: After the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, expectations were high that a long-pending dream of turning Visakhapatnam into a ‘City of Destiny’ a film hub, will become a reality. And, the dream remained unfulfilled when the TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu became the first chief minister of the divided Andhra Pradesh as no serious efforts were made to shift the Telugu film industry from Hyderabad to Visakhapatnam. 

The hopes of people from the Telugu film industry were revived when the chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy over the reins of the state and started taking decision actions like allowing the owners of the cinema theatres to increase the prices of the movie tickets, permission for additional shows or benefits shows, promising to provide incentives and facilities to the film industry if it moves to the state. 

Visakhapatnam is the first choice for filmmakers as the picturesque city has everything they need for making movies. The city has a beautiful beach, hill stations, waterfalls, forests and scenic locales. Even though the Tollywood industry is based in Hyderabad, but 40 percent of the Telugu movies are shot in Vizag. Veteran producer Rama Naidu owns a film studio which is spread across 54 acres of land in the beach city. The city also boasts of Durga Cinetone which was built in 1936 by Nidamarthi Surayya in Rajahmundry. 

Last year, several film stars and filmmakers from Tollywood including Chiranjeevi, Mahesh Babu, Prabhas, Ali, Rajamouli and others met Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy and discussed cinema ticket prices and other issues plaguing the Telugu film industry. The chief minister assured the delegation of Tollywood big stars that the government would constitute a committee to draft a policy that would benefit big and small film in the state. He also pushed for promoting film shoots in Andhra Pradesh and the Tollywood bigwigs agreed to shoot 20 percent of all Telugu films in the state. 

Later, the then Minister for Cinematography Perni Nani announced that the state government would cooperate in the construction of studios in Vizag if the film industry is moved to the city. He also said that the government will also build a residential area on the lines of Film Nagar and Jubilee Hills catering to the housing needs of the film personalities. 

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