Kona Venkat Calls These Directors ‘Criminals’

Article by Kumar Published on: 7:58 pm, 10 October 2026

Kona Venkat is a successful writer in the film industry whose production ventures have been major hits. Now, he has backed Sree Vishnu’s Comrade Kalyan, which is doing decent at the box office. Interestingly, Kona Venkat has been vocal about filmmakers spending beyond budget on films. Using examples, he shared the theory and explained how it is affecting the film business.

Kona Venkat objects to directors filming content of close to 3 hours 15 minutes and then trimming 1 hour 15 minutes to round up the film’s duration to two hours. “Why film a lot and then cut it off? Whatever is getting trimmed is a big waste. It also means a lot of money the producer spent, money that belongs to him. Because of poor planning, such situations arise, and there are a lot of such incidents, and I call them criminals in the film industry, whoever does it,” said Kona Venkat.

Many directors, lately, lack clarity on what they want and how to translate their vision to the screen. In the process, they film a lot of waste and then decide later, which is a sheer waste of time, effort, and money.

That said, Kona backed some of his assistants who became directors and are known for finishing films on time. “For instance, Bobby, Harish Shankar, and Shiva Nirvana always try to plan their films well, and during the time of Ninnu Kori, we shot 70 percent of the film in the USA in 31 days with a 35-member unit. Shiva plans his films like that. But, a lot of others do criminal wastage in the name of filming unnecessary content.”