Kranti is a Star challenge for Challenging Star

S Shyam Prasad

The tagline of Kannada superstar Darshan’s upcoming film Kranti is ‘Learn to fight alone.’ By design or default, this is how the film’s promotions are also being fought. The film’s release date was officially announced this week. It will be released on the Republic Day weekend on January 26, 2023.

The challenge the film faces came to the forefront on Monday when the film’s first press meet was held. Though, Darshan is counted among the top stars of the industry, not a single Kannada news channel turned up for the event.

For several months now, news channels have stopped covering news about the star. This followed the leak of an alleged conversation of the actor in which he is said to bad-mouth the media, especially the news channels.

For the last few months, fans of Darshan have been promoting the film both online and offline on their own. No news about Kranti was covered in any of the news channels. The uneasy relationship of Darshan with the media is not new. But this time, the divide between the two seems to have widened by quite a bit. Boycott of film stars by the media is not new.

This has happened for decades before news channels came into existence. Quite recently, news channels boycotted Dhruva Sarja for a few months before there was a rapprochement between the two. A similar breaking of the ice was expected to happen between Darshan and the news channels. It was not to be.

On Monday, the press meet for the mainstream media saw only newspaper journalists covering the event. Later, a press meet for online media was a full house with over a hundred YouTube channels in attendance. The shooting of Kranti is complete and it is in the final postproduction stage. The next three months will only be about the promotions of the film.

If Kranti can manage to succeed without the help of news channels promoting it, it will be a major tectonic shift in the way films will be promoted in future. How this current agreement to disagree will pan out over the next few weeks will be interesting to watch.

Kranti is directed by popular composer turned director V Harikrishna, a longtime favourite of Darshan. He made his debut as director with Darshan’s Yajamana. This is his second outing. Media House which produced Yajamana is producing this movie as well. The film is planned to be released in multiple languages including Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi.