Rajinikanth to Resume Shooting for ‘Robot 2’ from July

Rajnikanth fans are rocking to ‘Kabali’ music as album sales soar, the superstar will return to shoot for ‘Robot 2’

Superstar Rajinikanth, who is reportedly camping in the USA with wife Latha Rajinikanth and elder daughter Aishwarya Dhanush, has enough reasons to be happy. Though he could not be present at the album launch of Kabali - daughter Soundarya unveiled the low-key event on Saturday - the sales already look promising.

According to a spokesperson of Think Music India, the music label that released the album, 15,000 audio CDs of Kabali have already been sold.

“At a time when the CD market has almost crashed, the response to the Kabali album is incredible. It is yet another substantiation of the colossal stardom Rajinikanth commands in Tamil Nadu. The combined views of five songs of the album has already touched the five million mark on YouTube and we expect it to reach a crore in a day or two,” he says.  

Directed by Pa. Ranjith, Kabali revolves around the story of an ageing don and features Radhika Apte, Dhansika, Dinesh, John Vijay, Winston Chao and Ritwika. The film is all set for a worldwide release on July 15th in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and Malay.

While trade pundits are pegging the pre-release business figure of Kabali at a whopping Rs 200 crore, the film’s Karnataka distribution rights has already been secured by Rockline Venkatesh, who bankrolled Rajinikanth’s last outing, Lingaa that unfortunately tanked at the box-office. Meanwhile, the Telugu theatrical rights have been secured by prominent producers Praveen and K.P. Chowdhary of Shanmukha Films for Rs 32 crore.

Whether Rajinikanth will come back to India for the release of Kabali, his forthcoming gangster flick that’s scheduled to hit screens on July 15th, is still uncertain,” says an industry insider.

He adds that Rajinikanth’s health-related issues could also be a reason behind his unanticipated US visit just a few weeks before the grand audio launch for Kabali was was organized by producer Kalaipuli S. Thanu.

However, he will soon resume shooting for Shankar’s magnum-opus Robot 2 from the third week of July. The makers have already completed 50 per cent of the shoot including two high-octane action sequences and the climax.

Currently, Shankar is filming important segments with Akshay Kumar in Egmore, Chennai. The team completed 100 days of shoot on June 14th with a low-key celebration on the sets.