Yogi

Yogi is a 2007 Telugu action drama directed by V. V. Vinayak, starring Prabhas, Nayanthara and Sharada. It is a remake of the 2005 Kannada hit Jogi, directed by Prem, and features Kota Srinivasa Rao, Pradeep Rawat, Subbaraju and Ali in supporting roles. Ramana Gogula composed the music. Released at Sankranti in January 2007 (Wikipedia gives 12 January; our record has 14 January), it opened strongly but drew mixed-to-negative reviews and ended up a commercial failure.

What the story is about

Eeswar Chandra Prasad is a village boy so pampered by his mother, Santhamma, that he never wants to leave home. When his father dies, Eeswar goes to Hyderabad to earn money and fulfil his father’s last wish, looking for his friend Basha, a pickpocket, whom he cannot find. In the city he gets caught up, almost by accident, in the war between two land-mafia rivals, Kotayya and Narsing Pahilwan. A clash over the gold bangles he has bought for his mother turns the gentle villager into the most feared man in the city, known as Yogi, just as his mother arrives in Hyderabad to look for him. The mother-son story is the emotional core of the film.

Cast

• Prabhas as Eeswar Chandra Prasad, alias Yogi
• Nayanthara as Nandini
• Sharada as Santhamma, Yogi’s mother
• Kota Srinivasa Rao as Kotayya, Pradeep Rawat as Narsing Pahilwan and Subbaraju as his brother Saidulu
• Chandra Mohan as Chandranna, Ali as Basha and Brahmanandam as Padmasri; Mumaith Khan in the item number “Orori Yogi”

Music and production

Ramana Gogula, who had scored Vinayak’s Lakshmi, composed six songs for Yogi. The music was launched on 15 December 2006, and a “hexa platinum” disc function was held at the Ramappa Temple on 29 December 2006. Two songs were shot in Canada and one in Egypt.

Release and box office

Yogi had a strong opening, with a distributors’ share of ₹13.12 crore in its first week, according to Wikipedia, but it could not sustain it and finished as a commercial failure; News18 lists it among Prabhas’s pre-Baahubali flops. Vinayak later spoke about the reasons in an interview reported by the Hindustan Times (Telugu). It was dubbed into Malayalam, Hindi (as Maa Kasam Badla Loonga) and Tamil (as Murattu Thambi).

What critics said

Reviews compared it unfavourably with the Kannada original; the cast’s performances were praised but the screenplay and sad ending were criticised. Rediff.com was scathing, calling it “a ridiculously sentimental flick not worth wasting money at all”.

Where to watch Yogi

We do not have a confirmed streaming platform for Yogi on file. The OTT details on this page will be updated when a platform’s own listing confirms it.

Sources: the Wikipedia article on Yogi (2007) and the reviews and reports it cites, linked above; Wikidata; our own cast and crew records.