How R Chandru went from 1 film with Upendra to creating a Kabzaa franchise with Sudeep and Shivarajkumar

In November 2019, when Kannada filmmaker R Chandru launched his most ambitious film to date, Kabzaa, it was meant to be a single movie with Upendra in the lead. The film would be his third collaboration with the Real Star, after their earlier Brahma and I Love You. Within months of its launch, around the time Chandru had completed the first schedule of the film, the pandemic struck and production was halted.

Then, by late 2020, Chandru mooted the possibility of splitting the film in two parts, given the scale of the film and the possibilities as far as story-telling go. At this point, he’d still maintained that he was splitting the film because his story demanded it – the rise of a gangster in the underworld needed more than just one movie, he reckoned.

But as the days and months went by, the filmmaker spoke less about this and more about the fact that Kabzaa had become a multi-starrer in the process – Upendra had been joined by Kiccha Sudeep and Shivarajkumar in pivotal cameos. It is only when the film came out that it became clear why Chandru needed a sequel. Kabzaa, as it turns out, was a work in progress throughout its making with Chandru charting its course as he went along. This became abundantly evident during the promotions, when Upendra repeatedly spoke about how Chandru would ask him to report on set in the morning and not have a shot ready until the late afternoon.

But that’s not the worst of it – during the pre-release promotions of the film, after Shivarajkumar’s presence in the film was officially announced, Upendra had said that Chandru was hopeful of taking the franchise further with the Century Star’s character. In the film, Shivarajkumar’s character gets a few minutes in the climax, when he and his gang appear to challenge Arkeshwara (Upendra) and take over his empire. The film had an open ending with Arkeshwara staring at two prospects – a take down by cop Bhargav Bakshi (Sudeep) or by Shivarajkumar’s character. The big climax fight that audiences were hoping for did not happen, with Chandru pinning his hopes on being able to do the sequel and round-up the story.

However, in the immediate aftermath of the film’s theatrical release on March 17, fans of both Kiccha Sudeep and Shivarajkumar urged the actors not to return to the franchise. Fans were unanimous in their opinion that Chandru did not do justice to either of them, although both Sudeep and Shivarajkumar looked tremendous in the film. Sudeep was restricted to being the narrator and got less than five minutes screen-time, half of which was unwarranted anyway, while Shivarajkumar had even less to do. The consensus was that Chandru got both these actors on board to drum up excitement around the film. In fact, closer to the release, all posters of the film featured the three actors prominently, giving fans false hopes that each would have enough screen space and weightage.

Chandru remains bullish about being able to do the sequel, despite the largely negative feedback for the original. The bigger question, though, is, do audiences even want a sequel?