From Saaho posters to Sarileru Neekevvaru teaser to Keerthy Suresh’s national glory, here is a recap of this entire week in Tollywood

This particular week has been pretty eventful for Telugu cinema as a hell lot of things happened. First and foremost, Telugu cinema stamped its authority probably for the first time in National Awards by bagging numerous trophies in different categories. Besides the glory, the week kicked-off with the riveting trailer of Evaru followed by the string of posters of all characters from Saaho. Also, the lip-lock controversial took the centre stage in Manmadhudu 2 and Rana Daggubati clarified on his health rumours. Of course, one can’t ignore the stunning transformation of Navdeep who sported perfect six-pack abs.

While the theatrical trailer of Saaho is expected to give enough news for the weekend, let’s rewind all the major happenings which happened in Tollywood this week.

The 66th National Film awards were announced on Friday afternoon by jury head Rahul Rawail in New Delhi. While most categories were expectedly dominated by Bollywood, Telugu cinema has stamped its authority on the prestigious stage this time around. While Keerthy Suresh bagged the Best Actress award for her stellar performance as the legendary Savitri in Mahanati, Awe pulled out a surprise by winning two awards; Best VFX and Best Make-up. Mahanati was also awarded the Best Telugu Film and Best Costumes. Besides these two, Rahul Ravindran’s Chi La Sow acquired the Best Original Screenplay and Rangasthalam got the Best Sound Mixing.

On August 5, Natural Star Nani unveiled the theatrical trailer of Adivi Sesh’s upcoming film Evaru starring Regina Cassandra in the lead role. Touted to be the remake of Spanish film The Invisible Guest (2017), the riveting thriller showcases Sesh as a corrupt cop named Vikram Vasudev who is entrusted with the investigation into a murder committed by Cassandra’s character. The 100-second clip filled with twists & twists offered a glimpse of what to expect from the remake. Meanwhile, the original version revolves around a prominent lawyer helping his client to break free of the murder accusations.

Raising the anticipation bar ahead of the theatrical trailer launch, the makers of Sujeeth Reddy’s stylish action-thriller ‘Saaho’ have released a string of first look posters of all the major characters. Kicking-off with Neil Nitin Mukesh, the introductory images of actors like Jackie Shroff, Arun Vijay, Evelyn Sharma, Chunky Pandey, Lal, Mandira Bedi and Mahesh Manjrekar have been unveiled one by one the entire week. Starring Prabhas and Shraddha Kapoor in lead roles, the mega-budget multilingual film is set for a massive release on August 30 and the video promos have already promised loads of high-octane action and death-defying stunts.

On the occasion of Mahesh Babu’s 44th birthday, the makers of his current film Sarileru Neekevvaru have released an introductory video of the Superstar from the action-entertainer. In the 40-second teaser, Mahesh poses as Army Major Ajay Krishna who is serving for the country in Kashmir. With a terrific background score of the title track and spellbound visuals by Rathnavelu, the intro video has struck the right chord with netizens right from the word go. Directed by Anil Ravipudi, the Devi Sri Prasad musical boasts an ensemble cast including Rashmika Mandanna, Vijayshanti and Prakash Raj.

Akkineni Nagarjuna’s latest outing ‘Manmadhudu 2’ has opened to mixed reactions from both critics and viewers. However, besides the hilarious episodes in the romantic-comedy, the lip-lock moment between Rakul Preet Singh and anchor Jhansi has left everyone in shock. Though the makers blurred the kiss upon orders from the censor officials, the sequence is being screened without any edit or blur in the United States. So naturally, the video clip of both the celebrities engaging in a kiss has gone viral on social media. Right from the morning show itself, several netizens are trolling the lip-lock moment big-time and criticising director Rahul Ravindran for canning such an insensitive scene where a woman kisses another without her consent.

A couple of days ago, Navdeep took to social media and stunned all the netizens by revealing his ripped look with chiseled six-pack abs. Speaking about the motivation behind the rigorous workout in the gym for the past few months, the 33-year-old actor stated that “Well, at times in life things become so stagnant that you want to refresh everything. So I thought, let me reinvent myself in a way, I never did before.”

Terming Charan’s body transformation for ‘Dhruva’ as his inspiration, the ‘Gowtam SSC’ actor revealed that “Watching how Ram Charan reinvented himself in Dhruva, I felt I too can do it. When you see someone working on something personally, you get that boost. While working with Charan, I saw how committed he was to his regime and diet, and I got inspired.”