the mozart of madras ar rahman is known for charging exorbitant amounts for his films so it came as a surprise that the oscarwinning composer charged a very nominal fee reportedly a crore for the kannada film godfather a remake of the tamil hit varalaaru for which rahman had scored the music confirming the news the producer of the film k manju says rahman did not charge a penny for the film you can say he did it for free as he didnt charge anything for himself he charged approximately a crore only for the studio artists instruments recording and rerecording of the film quiz manju about why the composer took a pay cut and he replies he didnt compose all the tracks from scratch as they were lifted from the tamil version so the majority of the tracks for the film remain the same he only composed two new tracks also the length of the kannada footage is slightly shorter than the tamil version the other reason is that this is a goodwill gesture on rahmans part for the kannada audience some sources in the industry suggest that rahman slashed his price because he isnt flooded with offers at present manju refutes such conjecture saying rahman cannot sign projects left right and centre he has to keep up his quality work he spent six months working on the music score for godfather the composer who was in bangalore for the audio launch of the film on saturday said i owe a lot to my fans in karnataka i realize i have many fans in this part of the country im indebted to them and it was time to sing back to them rahman also reminisced about his days as a music arranger in bangalore i worked with kannada composers like hamsalekha and vijaya anand as an arranger and visited the chamundi studios so theres lot of history in bangalore and im glad to be back here