"Who said Baba was a flop?" - Director Suresh Krishna

Following is the extract of director Suresh Krishna's interview in TeluguCinema.com
Question: Speaking of Rajini, you did three films with him - Annamalai, Basha, and Baba. Again, the former two were super hits, and the latter was a disaster! What went wrong with Baba, which I see as a good film that was close to Rajini’s real-life personality?
Suresh Krissna: First thing I’d want to clarify is that Baba was a not disaster but was a super hit film! The film was made under 10 crores and collected between 25-30 crores. At that time, the government permitted raising the ticket rates during the initial days of film’s release, and the tickets went up rates as high as Rs. 500/- to Rs. 2000/- in most areas! The film collected more than the complete run of Annamalai in just three weeks because of this! Also, it opened with maximum number of prints. The reason people say it was a disaster because they over-expected the run and bought the film at a very high price. When they didn’t get that much money, they said it’s a flop, though it wasn’t. As you said, Baba was a good film with story and screenplay by Rajini and is thus definetly close to his heart.
Question: And, Basha was a free-make of Amitabh’s Hum! I also heard that the film was plannd to have a linear narration first but that Rajinikant and fight master Vijayan suggested that the flashback episode should come later. Is that true?
Suresh Krissna: I agree that Basha had shades of Hum, and that the film was definetly inspired by Hum but had a completely different treatment. Basha went on to become such a huge success that every hero wanted to do a clone of it, and that trend is still continuing even now! Rajini and Vijayan suggesting the flashback episode is not true. The film’s basic plot starts with Rajini going to get a seat in the Medical College for his sister. From there on, the film tempo starts off and that was how we planned it originally too.
Question: You did with top stars like Rajini, Kamal, Mohanlal, and Chiranjeevi in South India, but it seems like you didn’t concentrate so much in Bollywood. Given a chance, who do you like to work with in Hindi?
Suresh Krissna: I did three Hindi films and each one took more than a year to complete. Thus, I am not really comfortable working in Hindi, but if I get a chance, I’ll definetly like to do a film with Amit-ji - it will be a dream come true for me! Whenever I am directing a top star, I think about Amitabh-ji in my mind. Rajini and Kamal always tease me on this!
Question: What do you feel as the important element of a film?
Suresh Krissna: What else but the script! It is the heart and soul of any film, I believe.
http://www.telugucinema.com/c/publish/stars/interview_sureshkrissna_2009.php