Kabzaa heads to Hyderabad

S Shyam Prasad

The promotions of Upendra’s first pan-India film are set to start from Hyderabad. The R Chandru-directed film has been announced for a March 17 release coinciding with the birthday of Puneeth Rajkumar. Now the film team is gearing up to promote the film across the country. First up is a song release event in Hyderabad on February 4.

“This is a pan-India film and the promotions have been planned across the country. After the amazing response to the teaser last month, the question on everyone’s mind was the release date. It has been announced. Next up are the songs. The first song will be released in Hyderabad followed by one in Mumbai, one more in Chennai and two in Bengaluru. The film team will be travelling across the country for many more promotional events,” R Chandru said.

The event in Hyderabad is scheduled to be held at the JRC Convention Centre and is expected to be attended by many bigwigs of the Telugu industry including Chiranjeevi and SS Rajamouli. Chandru said he was presenting Kabza as a Kannada film that has a wider appeal.

“When the path to pan-India releases has been shown by one film, it would be a criminal waste not to follow it up with other pan-India films. The success of a pan-India film will not be an individual’s success. It will be the success of the entire film industry that it comes from. Just as SS Rajamouli put the Telugu industry on the national map, KGF has taken us national. We need to follow up,” he said. AS PRODUCER AND DIRECTOR Chandru is not a first-time producer, but the budget of Kabza is said to be more than all his previous films combined.

“As a director I am satisfied with the product I have come up with after three years. This is the best reward for any film-maker. Next, as a producer, I am making my best effort to take the film to the people. I have already sold the OTT rights of the film to Amazon Prime Video.

They had purchased my previous film with Upendra, I Love You. But Kabzaa was different. I showed them my film and they were convinced that this was on a different scale altogether. So they have paid me a big amount that is comparable to the OTT rights of other pan-India films,” he said. The distribution rights of the film in various languages have also been sold. In Hindi, the film is being released by Anand Pandit.

“In Telugu, it is Sudhar Reddy and Bombay Ramesh in Malayalam. The Tamil distribution is most likely to be by Lyca Productions. We are still negotiating terms and hopefully it will be completed this week,” he said. Chandru is yet to finalize the distributors in Kannada though. “This is our home market. It is our family. I am on good terms with every distributor here. We are yet to chalk it out,” he said.