MAA to ban outside actors?

In a bid to safeguard the interests of thousands of artistes in Andhra Pradesh, the Movie Artistes’ Association (MAA) is likely to ban actors from other language film industries. Notably, nearly 8 to 10 leading actors and actresses in Tollywood are from Bollywood, Kollywood and Mollywood.

"We are going to hold talks with producers to hire more Telugu actors, since our motto is to safeguard the interests of Telugu artistes," actor and MAA vice president Sivakrishna was quoted as saying.

"The bone of contention of 600-odd Telugu artistes is that dream merchants are violating the permissible limit of female leads, villains and other key characters and roping in other language actors even for cameo roles. In the process, they are depriving hundreds of Telugu artistes,” O. Kalyan, ex-chief of the Cine Workers' Union, said.

Meanwhile, Bollywood star Sonu Sood, who appears in Tollywood films, argued that it’s unfair to ban actors, since many actors from the South are working in Bollywood and vice versa. "Talent and popularity of a particular actor should be the criterion that counts,” he reasoned. Producer Suresh Babu is of the opinion that it’s not easy to implement such stipulations.