No on-ground event for Upendra’s Kabzaa trailer launch on March 4

A lot has been said and written about the Kabzaa trailer, the one thing that Kannada film aficionados are hoping will elevate the stock of the movie and director-producer R Chandru, after the teaser and the three songs that came out all turned out to be buzzkills. Chandru’s big plan was to release the trailer in Mumbai, with a mega event organized by the presenter and distributor Anand Pandit, but then there was a lot of backlash back home in Karnataka, as fans of the Kannada film industry wondered why he wasn’t doing any promotional activity here. The Mumbai event was then called off and it was speculated that he would do it in Bengaluru instead. Well, that isn’t happening either, at least not in the way we’ve been expecting.

In the past, every Kannada film worth its salt that had pan-India release plans had major events in Bengaluru and flew media personnel from across the country in to cover the same. Yet, for the Mumbai event, Chandru had no intention of taking the Kannada media or anyone else along. The only ‘local’ event he’s done so far was a brand building exercise for himself in his hometown Sidlaghatta.

On March 4, Chandru is releasing the trailer online at 5.02 pm, but one announcement poster features Zee Network on it. Now, Kabzaa’s digital partner is Amazon Prime Video, so you might wonder what does Zee have to do with the film. Well, Kabzaa is an official sponsor of the Karnataka Bulldozers team that is playing a match on March 4 against the Chennai Rhinos at the Chinnaswamy Stadium. So, the likelihood of the trailer being played at the stadium during the break after the first innings of both teams.

After the trailer launch, the team is expected to have pre-release events in Hyderabad and Chennai, with the last one, in Bengaluru likely to be on March 15.