Shivarajkumar’s Ghost to begin box office campaign with midnight show

In less than two weeks, Century Star Shivarajkumar’s much-awaited action heist thriller Ghost is releasing in theatres. The sole Kannada film looking to capitalize on the Dasara holiday and taking on the challenge of clashing with biggies from other industries, Ghost, according to director MG Srinivas, will release in about 350 screens across the state. On October 19, Ghost is releasing along with Thalapathy Vijay’s Leo, Ravi Teja’s Tiger Nageshwara Rao, with Balayya’s Bhagavanth Kesari, Tiger Shroff’s Ganpath and Kangana Ranaut’s Tejas arriving a day later.

The team is yet to confirm if there will be early morning shows, but what we do know is that the first show of Ghost will be at midnight (12 am) at the film’s main theatre in Gandhinagar. Shivarajkumar, Srinivas and producer Sandesh Nagaraj will join fans in the celebration of ringing in ‘Big Daddy’ at Santhosh theatre. While the team has revealed a first list of theatres, details are expected about Ghost’s release in other states. In Tamil Nadu and Telangana/Andhra Pradesh, the screen count will be relatively lower given they have big releases. Given that Shivarajkumar has got a new fanbase in Kerala, following his much-appreciated Jailer cameo, Ghost should be able to get a decent screen count in the state. Leo will be the bigger release there, in the absence of any major Malayalam movie. The response to the Hindi trailer of Ghost is giving the team hope of a good opening in that belt. The trailer has a whopping 15M views to date, which is well over twice the views the Kannada original got. It helps that the team has Jayantilal Gada’s Pen Studios on board as distribution partner.

Ghost is the first movie in Srini’s proposed Srinivas Cinematic Universe, which will merge it with the Birbal franchise. The actor-filmmaker’s character Mahesh Das will be seen in Ghost, while Birbal 2 will either feature Shivarajkumar or some prominent character from Ghost. This is also only the first of a two-part story, Srinivas had said earlier.