Obul Reddy (Prakash Raj) is a dreaded factionist who falls flat for Swapna (Bhumika). He kills her brother (Atchuyth) who objects their marriage. Swapna’s parents asks her to run away from home and go to her uncle’s place in US.
Ajay Varma (Mahesh Babu) is a Kabaddi player who comes to Kurnool for a tournament. Incidentally he saves Swapna from Obul Reddy. He takes her to his house promising to send her safely to US. Rest of the story is about how Ajay faces the factionist gang.
Trade
There was little hype when the movie was announced. Slowly as the movie shooting progressed, the expectations piled up and the chartbuster audio album doubled them. The movie managed to live up to the expectations and the movie was the first blockbuster hit for Mahesh Babu.
Highlights
This is the first combination of Mahesh and Gunashekar. The duo went on doing two more movies (Arjun and Sainikudu) together later.
Bhumika Chawla paired up with Mahesh for the first time in this movie.
The movie went on to bag several awards at various events. Here are some of the important ones.
Nandi Awards:
Best Feature Film (Silver) - M.S. Raju
Best Director – Gunasekhar
Best Music Director - Mani Sharma
Best Cinematographer - Sekhar V. Joseph
Best Editor - A. Sreekar Prasad
Best Art Director – Ashok
Best Choreographer - Raju Sundaram
Best Fight Master – Vijayan
Filmfare Awards:
Best Film - M.S. Raju
Best Director – Gunasekhar
Best Actor - Mahesh Babu
Best Music Director - Mani Sharma
Sidelights
Art director Ashok had recreated Charminar in the form of a set for the movie. The set was the talk of the town then.
The film was remade in Tamil as Ghilli, directed by Dharani with Vijay and Trisha Krishnan in lead roles which was a super hit too. Okkadu was also remade into Kannada as Ajay featuring Puneeth Rajkumar and Anuradha Mehta, into Oriya as Mate Anidela Lakhye Phaguna starring Sabyasachi Misra and Archita Sahu, and into Bengali as Jor starring Jeet and Barsha Priyadarshini.
Recently it was announced that Boney Kapoor’s son Arjun kapoor will be starring in the Hindi remake of this movie.