Sri: I thought it was the first film for Chiranjeevi that collected over 1 crore rupees! How come you say it's just break-even?
M. Tirupathi Reddy: It's true that the film collected more than one crore rupees in the first run! In fact, it collected almost 47 lakhs in the first week itself! But, the thing here is that we sold the film off even before we completed it - we got our buyers right when we announced the film! And, we just sold it off at 25 lakh rupees!   

Sri: The rights for movies will be sold after every five years, I believe, which means that you might have got more money when you sold the film for its second third release!
M. Tirupathi Reddy: Of course, yeah, we sold the rights again a couple of times, once every five years like you said. We got more than 20 lakh rupees in each run that followed! So, it's true that we made money much later than the first run.

Sri: And, you possibly got a decent sum of money for remake rights that you sold to Hindi and Kannada movie markets...
M. Tirupathi Reddy: Yes, but that was a time when remake rights didn't account to much money! That money we got was enough to cover the expenses for celebrating the 100-day run of Khaidi.

Sri: So, the film was a huge hit, but you didn't gain much on it in the first run, is it?
M. Tirupathi Reddy: Financially, I didn't gain much, but we got a huge name with the film, which in turn helped us do the second film Maha Sangramam on a very big scale. The film created a record of getting sold for a record price of one crore rupees even before we started the movie! For this film too, the basic story idea was mine and Paruchuri brothers worked on the story development. The film was not a such a huge hit though. The film had a little expensive budget - 80-85 lakh rupees - at that time, as it had huge star cast. (The film was delayed due to censor problems and some important scenes were chopped off, which impacted the film's run at BO.)

Sri: How much did you pay for the stars for that movie?
M. Tirupathi Reddy: Krishna and Sobhan Babu were paid equally - about seven lakhs each, while Jayasudha and Jayaprada were paid around four lakhs each, about the same amount to each one.

Sri: With the team of Khaidi, you again planned the movie Veta, which was nothing but a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo...
M. Tirupathi Reddy: True, we thought the magic of Khaidi will work out and repeated the same team. As I said earlier, it was me who gave the basic story idea for all my films. I liked the story of The Count of Monte Cristo  and asked them to adapt it to the current situations. The writers however felt that pre-independence era will suit the theme better. It didn't worked out anyway. People were not able to digest that the heroine gets married to someone else and is still in love with the hero, etc. All such aspects worked as negatives for the film, and it was a flop eventually!

Sri: Don't you feel that the casting is also another minus for the film? If you were planning to do the film with the same team, why was Madhavi not repeated?
M. Tirupathi Reddy: (Pauses hesitantly) That's not my decision, and I do not want to talk about it on the record!