Vijay’s stardom is at peaks. Not just in the Telugu states, even Tamil Nadu witnessed his mania when his Arjun Reddy’s BO collection stood next to magnum opus Baahubali : The Conclusion. This made producer Gnanavel Raja and director Anand to rope in Vijay for a Tamil-Telugu bilingual NOTA.

Vijay’s enormous fan base and him being the crowd puller is the biggest advantage for NOTA. He is the big asset for the film in Telugu. However, what is worrying many of his fans and a section of trade is the Tamil flavour in the movie.

The film being directed by Anand Shankar seems to have shades of elements, sentiments more connected to Tamil movie audiences who love politics and drama. While this is no wrong, but the trailer and promos indicate that the makers had put more attention on the Tamil version.

Earlier too, Mahesh Babu’s Spyder had suffered with similar problem during Spyder. The sensibilities and nativity issues since Murugudoss directed the film and focus was more on Tamil film.

On the other hand, NOTA is clashing with 96 in Tamil which has Vijay Sethupathi and Trisha in the lead roles. This film has been making strong noise from a while. Even Dil Raju had watched and bought the Telugu remake rights where he is planning to rope in Nani and Samantha in the Telugu version of 96. While 96 is giving a stiff competition in Tamil, the apprehensions on Telugu version are rife that the film could be marred by Tamil flavour.

Given that Tamil audiences haven’t accepted any of the Telugu-starrer films (be it a straight film or a dubbed film) there – Baahubali films being exception, thanks to Rajamouli, this is also worrying Vijay’s fans. As NOTA is all set to hit the screens on Oct 5, fans are keeping their fingers crossed. On the flip side, Vijay Deverakonda is quite confident and even took an oath saying the film is going to work.