Vikrant Rona co-producer Alankar Pandian now teams up with R Chandru for Upendra’s Kabzaa

His family has been in the business of making and distributing cinema, especially Tamil films for years, but Alankar Pandian has always harboured a soft corner for Kannada cinema. Having lived in Bengaluru for a while, before setting up shop in Dubai and Singapore with Invenio Origin, Alankar has always wanted to be associated with Sandalwood. Now, three films old, one as producer (The Terrorist) and two as co-producer (Ayushman Bhava and Vikrant Rona), he was on the lookout for a new collaboration when a chance encounter with Kabzaa director-producer R Chandru ended in a fruitful liaison.

Unlike his earlier ventures, though, where Alankar came onboard either right at the beginning or mid-way to facilitate the making, with Kabzaa, he will extend the expertise of his firm, Invenio Origin, in the film’s distribution, satellite and digital sales, especially in the overseas market. The period gangster drama Kabzaa, which has Real Star Upendra in the lead, is being presented as a two-part film, the first of which is likely to release in December or January 2023. Alankar, who has seen portions of the film, beside the much-appreciated trailer, is thrilled about this association. “It’s been my fervent endeavour to collaborate with good makers and films and Kabzaa is the latest. I have seen some bits of the film and was mind-blown by it. This will be the next film from Sandalwood to make the right kind of noise in the national and international market,” he says.

Kabzaa, which has Sudeep in a pivotal role, along with a massive ensemble cast including Shriya Saran, Kabir Duhan Singh, Murali Sharma, Jagapathi Babu, Rahul Dev, Posani Murali Krishna, Nawab Shah, Danish Akhtar Saifi, Anup Revanna and Pradeep Rawat, among others, has been picked up by Amazon Prime Video for streaming rights. The film is being prepared for a massive pan-India release with versions in Kannada, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Odia, Bhojpuri, among others.