Love is free, but the streaming rights will cost you.

The latest rumor vibrating through the echo chambers of Tollywood isn’t about a script or a box office projection. It’s about a wedding. Specifically, the long-rumored, never-confirmed union of Vijay Deverakonda and Rashmika Mandanna. The number currently being tossed around is Rs 60 crore. That’s roughly $7.2 million for the privilege of watching two people say “I do” through a polished, high-contrast Netflix or Amazon Prime lens.

It’s an absurd figure. It’s also exactly what we deserve.

In the current attention economy, a celebrity wedding isn't a private milestone; it’s an IPO. We’ve moved past the era of grainy paparazzi shots taken from a nearby rooftop. Now, the stars own the means of production. They control the lighting, the edit, and the narrative arc. If the rumors are true—and let’s be clear, “truth” in this industry is a flexible concept—a streamer is willing to pay the equivalent of a mid-budget action movie's production cost just to capture the scent of expensive incense and choreographed tears.

But let’s look at the friction. Sixty crore doesn't just buy a video; it buys a soul-crushing level of intrusion. You aren’t just inviting your aunties and college friends. You’re inviting a fleet of 4K cameras, a crew of fifty sound engineers, and a director who will probably ask you to "retake" the ring exchange because the shadows didn't hit the Manish Malhotra embroidery quite right. It turns a ceremony into a set. It’s a trade-off where the intimacy is hollowed out to create a product that can be binged on a Tuesday night by someone eating cold leftovers.

The math, however, is where things get truly cynical. For a platform like Netflix or Disney+ Hotstar, Rs 60 crore is a marketing spend. They aren't buying a documentary; they’re buying a massive spike in South Indian subscriptions. They’re buying "engagement," that hollow metric that keeps tech executives employed. They know the parasocial bond fans have with "Rowdy" and "National Crush" is a goldmine. The fans aren't just viewers; they’re stakeholders in a fictionalized reality.

The "truth" being peddled by PR circles right now is a mix of denial and calculated silence. Representatives are doing the usual dance, neither confirming the deal nor the relationship. It’s a classic hype-building tactic. You leak a massive number to set the floor for future negotiations. If people believe someone offered 60 crore, then the real deal—maybe at 30 or 40—looks like a bargain. It’s a valuation game played in the dark.

This isn’t just about two actors. It’s about the death of the "candid." We live in a world where every milestone is optimized for a thumbnail. The tech platforms have trained us to expect high-production values even from the most personal moments of the people we follow. We’ve reached a point where a wedding is only "real" if it’s been color-graded and has a licensed soundtrack.

If this deal actually goes through, it sets a grim precedent for the industry. It turns the most private human experience into a line item on a balance sheet. The friction here isn't just the cameras in the bridal suite; it’s the realization that the stars we admire are increasingly becoming brands that happen to have human faces.

Is the 60 crore figure real? Probably not. It smells like a frantic publicist trying to drum up interest during a slow news cycle. Most of these deals end up being significantly lower, or structured around "promotional partnerships" rather than cold, hard cash. But the fact that we find the number even remotely plausible says everything about where we are. We’ve accepted that everything—even the "I do"—is for sale if the lighting is good enough.

We’ve turned the concept of "happily ever after" into a multi-part limited series with a cliffhanger before the second ad break. When the footage eventually drops, if it ever does, we’ll all watch. We’ll complain about the pacing. We’ll judge the decor. We’ll scroll through Twitter while two people exchange vows in HDR.

If you’re willing to turn your wedding into a content farm for the price of a small jet, do you even own the memory anymore, or does it belong to the shareholders?