Dubbing row: The Legend distributor blames exhibitors for lack of Kannada version in movie halls

Last evening, the cast and crew of the pan-India film The Legend, which is the debut of leading man Saravanan Arul, was in Bengaluru for its pre-release event. Scheduled to start at 3 pm, the team kept the media waiting for well over an hour. Leading man Saravanan is a 52-year-old debutante, who has attached the moniker Legend to his name, in keeping with his business interests – The Legend Saravana and The Legend New Saravana stores – and the film, The Legend.

Directed by film and ad making duo JD-Jerry, the film, which has Urvashi Rautela in the lead and Raai Laxmi in a special number, is getting a pan-India release on July 28. It has set up a box-office clash with Kiccha Sudeep’s Vikrant Rona. In Karnataka, Horizon Studio is distributing the film and the first question on everybody’s mind was about the language split of the release.

It was pointed out that even though the lead actors of RRR dubbed in Kannada themselves, the distributors, KVN Productions, ‘cheated’ audience here by prioritizing the Telugu original and allotting only a couple of screens to the Kannada version. In fact, back then the banner had clarified that the fault lay with exhibitors who refused to take the Kannada version.

Tony A Raj of Horizon Studio had the same argument. “We can give exhibitors the Kannada dubbed version, but they should be willing to take it, right? This is a question you should be addressing to exhibitors. I cannot insist that they play the Kannada version only,” he said. To a statement that releasing a Kannada version in one or two centres is an insult to the state and the language, Tony responded, “We had spent Rs 55 lakh on dubbing the Tamil film Vishwasam into Kannada as Jaga Malla. My share as its distributor was Rs 35,000. Now who has insulted who? Yet we have not been disheartened by it and are still continuing to bring Kannada dubbed content as well.”