PremiumPavana Gowda-led revenge drama Rudri to get direct-to-OTT release
Directed by Badiger Devendra, Rudri did the round of film festivals and was set for release when the pandemic struck
Last Updated: 03.10 PM, Nov 08, 2023
If it had not been for the pandemic, the Kannada film Rudri, which has Pavana Gowda in the lead, would have been in theatres a long time ago. Written and directed by Badiger Devendra, the film is inspired by some real incidents that happened in north Karnataka, which he has presented with adequate cinematic liberties. Pavana plays the title character, a young girl, who becomes the victim of a gang-rape and then goes on to exact vengeance on the perpetrators. Produced by CR Manjunath, the film, which has won awards at a few festivals, is now set for release, but is skipping a theatrical outing in favour of a direct-to-OTT approach.
Rudri will come on Namma Flix on November 10, Manjunath tells us, also explaining why he chose to forego a theatrical release. “By the time Rudri was ready for release, theatres had shut and streaming platforms came to the fore. Ever since the market opened up again, we’ve been looking for an opportunity to bring the film to theatres, because you need that to strike a satellite deal. But then, since the film does not have a ‘mass hero’ to shoulder it, the offers we got were not very enticing. To our luck, the team of Namma Flix saw our film and offered to host it on the platform. I believe that releasing the film directly on OTT will give it a wider reach than we would have got with a limited theatrical outing. Also, there are 5-6 films releasing every week, some of which no one would have even heard of. We did not want Rudri to get lost amid these movies. Rudri’s content is the kind that will be consumed by OTT audiences,” he says.
The filmmaker adds that he has now left it to the viewers to decide the fate of his film. “If the content is good, audiences will watch. I believe that we have done a decent job and Rudri should work for viewers. This is not a film that we made with the intention of making money. As long as our expenses were covered, that’s all we were looking at. The idea was to show audiences a hard-hitting incident and how the protagonist deals with it,” says Manjunath.