Right now the mainstream cinema seems to be trapped with star's system ruling the roost and making all the important decisions.

So ridiculous has the system degenerated that the star now inspite of not featuring in his home production makes that all important changes in the script to satisfy his fans. What's more we also see that stars sometimes play hide and seek by removing and reinstating directors from their projects and sometimes heroines. Puri Jagannath's experience is a classic example to this case. After being removed from Chiranjeevi's Geetha arts film, he was again reinstated in the film. This inspite of the image of a successful director. It is another matter that Puri recently opted out of the project, but the real reasons are still to be known.

Not all directors meet with the same fate. There are some who run behind stars and earn their goodwill. One close look at the movies which have done well this year and we realise that the emphasis was on content presentation rather than on star value. It's high time the industry walahs realize this and move towards this common goal rather than to suffer the ignominy of being left out by other entertainment industries.

Ramgopal Varma who prides himself in making bolder movies hit the nail on the head in his recent interview with Indiatimes. "The film industry has to move towards corporatisation to survive these hard times when stars demand sky high prices and are not worth it as there is no guarantee that the film will work because of a star."

Varma has made the first step by joining hands with Birla corp. It's high time others also made the move to nurse the bulging injury to Tollywood.