Media365
4 min readMumbaiOct 7, 2026 02:34 PM IST
Srikanth Odela’s period action film The Paradise scored the biggest opening of Nani’s 18-year career, and also emerged as his first film to earn over Rs 100 crore at the domestic box office. However, the actor recently responded to the polarizing reviews and reactions to the film, admitting that if his team had more time during post-production, they could’ve turned in a better product.
Nani on The Paradise’s polarizing response
“We’re in a place where we’re just thinking backwards, given the reactions. We’re also aware of the timing. With the less post-production time, we rushed things a little bit. It was always there on the back of our mind whether we’ll be able to achieve everything in time,” confessed Nani to The Hollywood Reporter India. However, he didn’t want to buy more time by pushing the film, since he had already done that twice.
The Paradise was initially scheduled to release on March 26 earlier this year. It was then pushed to August 21, before finally seeing light of the day on September 25. In the process, it averted major clashes with Ranveer Singh-starrer blockbuster spy thriller Dhurandhar 2: The Revenge and Yash’s action thriller Toxic: A Fairytale for Grownups respectively.
“This was the third release date. The audience was so excited about the film that we didn’t want to give up on them because of the postponement that happened so many times. So, we had an extremely tight deadline. More things would have made sense narratively with the edit and the score, if we had more time. We could’ve smoothened it out,” explained the actor.
He acknowledged the “little glitches” that the audience are complaining about, like the fact that parts of The Paradise feel a “little jumpy”. “We could’ve made all of that better, but we’ll never know I guess. We don’t know if it would’ve worked better had we pushed the film,” said Nani, adding, “We all get carried away and do mistakes. But if we understand and learn from them, that’s the best way we can go ahead.”
Nani lauds Srikanth Odela
The Paradise also carried tall expectations given it marked the reunion of Nani and director Srikanth Odela after their 2023 action film Dasara, which amassed Rs 121 crore at the worldwide box office, on a budget of Rs 65 crore. On the other hand, the budget of The Paradise is somewhere between Rs 150 crore and Rs 200 crore, but it’s garnered only Rs 169.15 crore globally yet, within 13 days of its box office run.
“With The Paradise, Srikanth had great ideas. But when the span of the film went up, when the expectations went up, the focus shifted from storytelling to set pieces. So, the connectivity wasn’t there. If he just sticks to his heart, and focuses on just telling the story, I still believe he’s one of the best talents we have,” said Nani.
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Further heaping praises on the director, Nani added, “In these many years, if I have to really bet on someone, he’d be on the top of the list. He’s a very, very original guy. He has a lot of ideas, but after stitching them together, his bigger vision somewhere got a little diluted.” He admitted that since the expectations were sky high from him and Srikanth, the polarizing reactions “hurt even more”.
The Paradise also stars Raghav Juyal as the chief antagonist, along with Sonali Kulkarni, Mohan Babu, and Easwari Rao among others. Set in a Secunderabad slum of the 1980s, it stars Nani plays a tribal leader called Sarakka. It opened at Rs 11.60 crore from 900 screens at the domestic box office, but has slipped down to even below Rs 1 crore — at Rs 93 lakh — by its second Tuesday (day 13).
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The Paradise has earned Rs 138.10 crore gross and Rs 117.13 crore net at the domestic box office. Its major chunk comes from the native Telugu version, followed by the dubbed Hindi version, though Nani refused to label it as a ‘pan-India release’. Having collected Rs 31.05 crore internationally, it’s earned Rs 169.15 crore globally so far. “Keeping all the reactions and numbers aside, we know we could’ve done better,” Nani reiterated.
