Is Darling Krishna’s choice of films ruining the goodwill he got with the Love Mocktail series?

By his own admission, Darling Krishna’s acting career was going nowhere, until he decided to change things up and make a film that would catapult him into a different league. In 2020, when Love Mocktail came out, it became a runaway hit and its lead pair, Krishna and his then girlfriend-partner in crime-and now wife – Milana Nagaraj, became much sought after in Kannada film circles.

Love Mocktail was a film that Krishna and Milana produced together with whatever money they could spare. The story of one man’s tryst with love, not once, but thrice over, worked well with audiences, but the fall out of that was that other filmmakers who wanted to cast Krishna in their films also chose to follow similar story patterns. Multiple heroines became the order of the day for Krishna, whether it is Dil Pasand, Sugar Factory, Lucky Man, Local Train, among others. He repeated the formulae in his own follow up, Love Mocktail 2, to some effect, although audiences were not as taken in as the original.

While Love Mocktail 2 was a moderate success, none of Krishna’s other films since Love Mocktail have made a mark at the box office. He’s had releases like srikrishna@gmail.com, Local Train, Lucky Man and, more recently, Dil Pasand, which did not work. Lucky Man pulled some crowds initially, but that was only because the film featured the late Power Star Puneeth Rajkumar as god.

Read: Love Mocktail 2 concludes Aadi’s arc, but I can spin Love Mocktail 3 too: Darling Krishna 

When OTTplay asked Krishna about only doing rom-coms, he’d said that it was his favourite genre, as he believes they have repeat value, unlike thrillers, where once the mystery is solved, there is no going back to it. He has also been quoted as saying that he does not involve himself too much in the nitty-gritties of a film that he isn’t directing. In an interview with us prior to Love Mocktail 2, the actor-filmmaker had addressed the failure of srikrishna@gmail.com and what netizens were saying about him at that point, which is pretty much what is being said now as well.

He had said, “The way I see it, Krishna the actor and Krishna the director are two different entities. When I am on a set only as an actor, I don’t involve myself in anything other than what is expected of me, whereas when I am making a film, I take complete responsibility and make sure that it is good and watchable.” As for his bad films impacting his marketability as an actor, he added, “I don’t want to take up a lot of pressure with each of my films. It is a director’s responsibility to make a film work. As an actor, I would have okayed something based on an interesting narration. The onus of executing it in that way is up to the producer and director. As a producer-director myself, I understand the pressure involved in making a film, so, I don’t want that with every project. If I start taking too much interest in my acting commitments, I will lose a few years of my life with all the stress. Let me be honest, there are projects where I just want to act and then detach myself from everything else. Eventually, if the film is good or bad, the complete credit has to go to the team.”

On social media, fans have been saying that by doing ‘senseless movies’, Krishna is not only ruining the fame he got with Love Mocktail, but also ensuring that when he eventually does a good film, audiences may not turn up for it. The solution, they reckon is for him to be more involved in script selection, or make his own films, like the three Shettys.

For now, Krishna has a few more rom-coms lined up, namely Love Birds, Love Me or Hate Me and Kausalya Supraja Rama. He has said that he will return to writing a script early next year. The hope is that he pays keen interest in what fans are saying now, and writes his next accordingly.