Revealed: Run-time of Raj B Shetty’s revenge drama Toby

The countdown for the release of actor-filmmaker Raj B Shetty’s Toby has begun. The film, produced by Raj’s Lighter Buddha Films, along with Coffee Gang Studios and Agastya Films is set to hit theatres on August 25. Clearing all decks for its release, the film was censored U/A earlier today. Based on a short story by TK Dayanand, which Raj rewrote and gave a more cinematic flavour, the film, according to the actor-filmmaker, is best described as a revenge drama.

Even though the trailer had glimpses of violence , which had audiences wondering if its flavour was similar to that of Raj’s earlier Garuda Gamana Vrishabha Vahana, the actor has consistently maintained that the two films are vastly different. Toby, he reckons, is a film that he not only mounted on a larger scale, but is also far more massy than GGVV ever was. Raj plays the title character in the film, while actors like Gopalkrishna Deshpande, Bharath GB, Samyukta Hornad and Chaithra J Achar, Deepak Shetty, among others, are part of the ensemble cast.

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With cinematography by Praveen Shriyan and music by Midhun Mukundan, Toby, according to Raj is a hardcore commercial film that’s character driven. The actor-filmmaker insists that the graph of the characters is such that audiences will root for each of them , even though most of them, including Toby, have flaws. With only days to go for the theatrical release, we are now told that the runtime of the film is about two and a half hours. A source close to the team tells us that the narrative spans 2 hours and 28 minutes without credits.

Presented by KVN Productions, Toby will be released widely in its Kannada original version, but Raj is ready with dubbed versions that will be dropped in the market if there is sufficient demand.

Read also: Raj B Shetty: I feel angry when someone else takes credit for a story I have written