Rishab Shetty’s Kantara set to enthrall audiences in Spain and Italy

Kannada filmmaker-actor Rishab Shetty’s Kantara was not meant to be more than a Kannada film release restricted to Karnataka and a few neighbouring markets with a Kannadiga viewership. The makers, Hombale Films, had called it a mannina kathe, and decided to release it in Kannada only across the country, on September 30 last year. The response to the film was phenomenal, following which there was demand from other parts of the country to present it in different regional languages. At the time, Hombale Films had not dubbed Kabzaa in any other language, as that was planned for a later stage for the OTT release.

Within days, though, all that changed and the team had to release the Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Hindi versions, all of which were also received well by audiences. After a theatrical run that helped the film amass a whopping Rs 400 crore and counting from the box office, Kabzaa’s south Indian language versions headed to Amazon Prime Video, while Netflix scooped up the Hindi and English versions. Despite the OTT outing, it seems that Kantara’s dream run is far from offer. Only days after Rishab flew to Geneva to present his film at the United Nations, it has now been announced that Hombale Films is working on dubbing Kantara in Spanish and Italian for release in Spain and Italy.

Earlier Kantara had become one of 11 films from India that had met qualification criteria to be eligible for the Oscar long list. It was then among the 300-odd films up for nominations to the various categories. Rishab’s film, which was based on a man vs nature conflict, is set to get another instalment. The filmmaker-actor has said that he is looking at presenting a prequel, which will look into the history of the two deities mentioned in the film, Panjurli and Guliga.