Karthik Ramakrishnan’s Bannerghatta to release on Amazon Prime Video

After Mohanlal’s Drishyam 2 and Fahadh Faasil’s Joji, Shibu fame Karthik Ramakrishnan’s Bannerghatta will be the third Malayalam movie to opt for a direct-to-OTT release on Amazon Prime Video this year. 

The movie, which is set to drop on the OTT service later this month, is a thriller shot in Bangalore and Palakkad. Debutant Vishnu Narayanan, who has helmed the movie, tells us, “We are glad that our movie is the third direct-to-OTT release on Amazon Prime Video. While Bannerghatta will initially be released in Malayalam, it will also be dubbed in three other languages.”

Further on the movie, he says, “It’s a thriller revolving around Karthik’s character and the Bannerghatta forest in Karnataka is an important backdrop in the story.”

Ask Vishnu about his opinion on releasing his debut film on an OTT platform instead of theatres and he says, “Every debutant filmmaker wants his or her film to be shown in a theatre. But for this film, we took into account the pandemic and so, it was made especially for OTT. If theatres were available, we would have released it there too, but that’s not the case now. Also, we didn’t want to hold back the content as it could lose its freshness.”

The film marks the second project featuring Karthik, who made his debut playing Dileep’s fan in the 2019 movie Shibu. The directors of Shibu, Arjun Prabhakaran and Gokul Ramakrishnan, have written the script of Bannerghatta. 

Apart from Karthik, the movie also has four real-life policeman as pivotal characters. “They are also theatre artistes and we picked them after an audition,” says Vishnu, adding that the movie will be released later this month. 

Prithviraj’s Cold Case is another Malayalam film that is rumoured for a direct-to-OTT release on Amazon Prime Video soon.