'Kantara' Fans Assemble: The Rishab Shetty Prequel Has a Lot Riding On It

The 'Kantara' universe fandom are working overtime to keep the adrenaline going, writes Anand Mathew.

Rishab Shetty in a still from the trailer of Kantara: Chapter 1.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

Even just days before the much-anticipated prequel to Kantara, if you were in Bengaluru, the absence of visible publicity would have left the film buff in you puzzled.

Amid the trail of uncollected garbage, half-built concrete pillars, and potholed roads, one could only empathise with the bloated city raging against its own citizens, its soul hollowed out by cronyism. Huge realty billboards slice the sky, promising islands of heaven soon to merge with these hellholes.

As you search in vain for any sign of the Rishab Shetty-starrer Kantara: Chapter 1, you're almost ready to give up. Then—voila!—at the Brigade Road traffic signal, a fleeting 10-second digital signage announces the release, before giving way to a jeans-wear ad towering over the mess below. But such is our era, where digital highways and social media fight for our eyeballs and, more crucially, our wilting attention spans.

A Rustic Story Became a Nationwide Sensation

A week since its full-fledged trailer release on YouTube, the film’s Kannada version has grossed over 20 million views, garnering excellent bandwidth even with the dubbed ones in Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, and Tamil.

With the Dussehra week already beckoning, the production house Hombale Films is certain their holiday offering will turn out to be another sure-shot box office success, if not even replicate the mammoth success of its predecessor.

But can it go even further and do what the current all-time Kannada industry hit KGF: Chapter 2 did and rewrite record books?

Will the new prequel have the majestic appeal to beat the original Kantara: A Legend's earnings and be crowned the new champion? Well, only time and the crucial footfalls over its first weekend will tell.

Kantara: A Legend released exactly three years ago, came quietly without any pre-release hype, and settled in theatres all across the country for a really long run and an oversized box office haul.

The film’s grounded and rustic storytelling anchored the narrative to the state’s Udupi and Dakshina Kannada region. The team, under actor-director Shetty, who actually hails from Keradi along the coastal belt of Karnataka, brought out the region’s traditional and cultural vitality in full play.

The story resonated sharply with audiences, including its authentic take on the agricultural and pastoral lives of the local populace of these villages.

Like a master storyteller, Shetty artfully embedded this with popular cultural beliefs of the region, such as the Bhoota Kola ritual and other folk traditions, bringing in elements of mystic faith and fair doses of the supernatural and the celestial. Ultimately, the masterstroke that elevated the film to an altogether different level was the twinning of all the above with a clear take on our species’ unquenchable thirst for power, land ownership, and the blatant disregard we show in trampling nature’s immense bounty.

What also kept audiences invested across the country in Kantara was the taut screenplay that adroitly dramatised the confrontation between the antagonist, played by actor Kishore G (a forest officer), and Shetty—the protagonist who plays a buffalo race champion and rises to protect the sanctity of the land owned by the villagers.

Rishab Shetty in a still from Kantara: A Legend.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

This emotional arc of the son of the soil going to any extreme to ward off the evil designs of landlords and the governmental machinery, coupled with top-notch production values, enabled the film to speak to the hearts and minds of a diverse audience.

While the film did suffer from the stereotypical portrayal of women being submissive to the all-consuming hero—a popular card trick displayed by almost all commercial films based in the rural hinterland—the elaborate and masterful recreation of the Bhoota Kola ritual and the traditional bullock races catapulted the film into an epic hallowed zone.

Folklore, Myth, and High-Octane Action

Knowing full well that the earlier Kantara is a tough act to follow, Shetty fans and the Kantara universe fandom are working overtime on social media to keep the adrenaline going.

The nearly three-minute-long trailer, released a few days back, does its job—racking up interest as it traces the origin story of Kantara with an interplay of folklore, mythic gods, nature’s sanctity, palace intrigue, and the age-old vileness of human fallibility, all given a meticulous spin twice over.

True to Hombale Films’ vision of redefining Indian cinema for a global audience, the makers have left no stone unturned in stepping up the scale and sweep of the spectacle, ensuring audiences get what they are looking for—and more.

Pre-release publicity material highlights the teamwork of five action directors in choreographing the film’s set pieces, shifting the balance toward more hardcore real action sequences instead of the lazy, in-your-face VFX efforts that have plagued many recent big-budget extravaganzas.

One of the strongest aspects of the first part of Kantara—along with its brisk and well-embedded screenplay—was the adept execution of its high-voltage action scenes. Such was the craze for Shetty’s first installment that, even in its fourth week, the Hindi version was raking in more than new releases from Akshay Kumar and Ajay Devgn.

High Expectations, Low Publicity

Kantara: Chapter 1 also carries a burden for the overall Kannada box office industry, which has not seen a commercial blockbuster from any of its popular movie stars in a while.

While stars like Upendra, Kichcha Sudeep, and Darshan—popular in the state—have had occasional successes within Karnataka, none could broaden their scope pan-India. This is where production houses like Hombale Films have their sights set with the Kantara prequel.

A still from Kantara: The Legend.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

Riding high on their recent smash hit, the animated Mahavtar Narsimha, which did roaring business across languages, strategists at the production house seem to know well which way the box-office wind is blowing.

Providentially, the interim stay granted by the Karnataka High Court on the state government’s notification earlier this month capping movie ticket prices at Rs 200 ensures that multiplex owners, distributors, and exhibitors can independently decide pricing strategies—especially during the lucrative Dussehra holiday week.

Kantara: Chapter 1 also attracted some unwanted media glare down South when an online fan account asked netizens to stay away from consuming meat and alcohol and avoid smoking on the day they venture into cinemas to watch the prequel. Both Hombale Films and Shetty immediately criticised this, saying that no one has the right to suggest, question, or police others’ choices of food or lifestyle.

The fan account, clearly trying to make noise and attract attention, even created Google forms for participants and used the film’s logos and titles in its posts. Following the response from the makers, the account later took down the post and issued an apology, calling it a “mistake.”

The makers of the film have chosen not to indulge in over-the-top pre-release publicity, instead letting the audience do the talking once the movie releases.

True to its title, Kantara (meaning “mysterious forest”), certain things are best left unsaid and kept under wraps, creating an unexplainable aura for audiences to cherish and enjoy solely on the big screen.

(Anand Mathew is based in New Delhi and writes of films, entertainment and contemporary issues.)