Aagadu

Aagadu (English: He will not halt) is a 2014 Indian Telugu-language action comedy film directed by Srinu Vaitla. Written by Anil Ravipudi, Upendra Madhav and Praveen Varma, the film was jointly produced by Ram Achanta, Gopi Achanta, and Anil Sunkara under their banner 14 Reels Entertainment. It features Mahesh Babu and Tamannaah in the lead roles and Rajendra Prasad, Sonu Sood, Brahmanandam, and M. S. Narayana in supporting roles. Shruti Haasan made a special appearance in the film by performing an item number. Aagadu marked S. Thaman's 50th film as a music composer. K. V. Guhan provided the cinematography and M. R. Varma edited the film. Mahesh played the role of Shankar, an encounter specialist who is transferred to a village named Bukkapatnam as its circle inspector of police and is assigned the task of halt the plans of a power plant construction by Damodar (played by Sonu Sood), an influential crime boss as it is considered harmful to the natural resources of the locality. Shankar learns that Damodar is the reason behind his brother Bharath's suicide and seeks revenge. Aagadu was produced on a budget of ₹650 million. Principal photography commenced on 28 November 2013 and lasted until 5 September 2014. Majority of the film was shot in and around Hyderabad. A few portions of the film were filmed in Mumbai, Gujarat, Bellary, and Kerala. Some song sequences were filmed in Ladakh, Switzerland and Ooty apart from Hyderabad and Bellary. The post-production phase, which lasted for 50 days, was wrapped up on 16 September 2014. Released on 19 September 2014 in 2000 screens globally, Aagadu opened to decent critical reception and debuted with a positive response at the box office. Due to unfavourable word of mouth and competition from new releases, Aagadu ended up collecting a distributor share of ₹342.5 million globally and was declared a box office bomb due to the high costs involved. However, Aagadu crossed the US$1 million mark at the United States box office in two days including its previews, which was considered a remarkable feat. The film was dubbed into Hindi as Encounter Shankar and into Tamil as Idhudhaanda Police.