Real Star Upendra’s magnum opus underworld saga, Kabzaa, gets a release date

It’s been well over three years since Kannada filmmaker R Chandru launched his most ambitious project to date – Kabzaa. A period underworld film, Kabzaa has Real Star Upendra in the lead, and the story revolves around a freedom fighter Amareshwara who is killed by the British, due to certain circumstances. His son, Arkeshwara, becomes the don of the underworld in India during the period of 1960-1984 and sets his mark in Indian history. Given that it is a period film, Kabzaa has been completely shot in specially erected sets.

Given the vastness of the subject being told, Chandru had announced earlier that Kabzaa would be a two-part film. The film, which has music by KGF fame Ravi Basrur, boasts a massive ensemble cast, including Shriya Saran, Sudeep, Shivarajkumar, Jagapathi Babu, Prakash Raj, Samuthirajani, Murali Sharma, Nawab Shah, Kabir Duhan Singh, Danish Akthar Saifi, Pradeep Singh Rawat, Krishna Murali Posani, Pramod Shetty, Anoop Revanna, among others. When OTTplay last spoke to Chandru, he was working at breakneck speed to try and bring the first part of the story to theatres in December last year. While he was not able to meet that deadline, the latest we hear is that he and co-producer Alankar Pandian have zeroed in on a release date for Kabzaa.

Chandru will bring his underworld saga to theatres on March 17, a date that already has Golden Star Ganesh’s Baana Daariyalli vying for theatres. More importantly, March 17 is the late Power Star Puneeth Rajkumar’s birth anniversary, and several of his film teams, including those of Gandhada Gudi and James, reportedly, have plans to release these titles on the day. But if there are other major releases on March 17, keeping the day exclusive to Puneeth will not be possible.

The satellite rights of Kabzaa has already been sold to Amazon Prime Video. For the Hindi version, they have tied up with Anand Pandit, who will present it as Underworld Ka Kabzaa in the north Indian belt.