Rishab Shetty’s ‘Kantara’ has achieved remarkable success in India, becoming a cultural phenomenon and a top box office hit. Despite a strong theatrical run, the film faced losses in North America, its usual prime market. The sequel, ‘Kantara 2’, is set to feature a star-studded cast, with a third installment also confirmed.
Rishab Shetty’s Kantara : A Legend Chapter 1 will go down in history as one of the biggest culturally rooted films in Indian cinema history besides becoming the 7 biggest box office hits of India. In India despite the film being released on OTT on the 29th day of its release the film has been managing to pull audiences into the theaters and on its sixth weekend it was able to mint Rs 3.73 crore and took the overall collection of the film to Rs 618.78 crore with Rs 221.86 crore coming from Hindi and Rs 198.53 crore coming from Kannada. But the film has turned out to be a loss making venture in North America, which has typically been the biggest market for Indian films outside of India. The market has been dominated by Hindi and Telugu films, Kantara 1 and KGF’s success showed that the market is open for everyone. The film closed its theatrical business in the circuit with an overall collection of USD 4.73 million ( Rs 41.98 million), the film made it to the top 5 Indian money spinners at the box office. But the film’s breakeven point was pegged at USD 7.5 million and thereby turning a huge loss for distributors. Contrary to Indian collection where Hindi and Kannada were the engines of the film, here it was the Telugu version which took the lead and contributed over USD 2 million with Kannada version coming close second to USD 1.78 million and Hindi coming in third at USD 710K. Kantara 2 features Rishab Shetty alongside Rukmini Vasanth, Gulshan Devaiah and Jayaram. The franchise will return for the third part which was announced in the climax of the second part but it will take a few years to go on floors as Rishab has few big projects as an actor in his hands like Jai Hanuman and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s biopic.