Kabzaa: Is R Chandru not promoting the Upendra film because he has already recovered costs?

A search for #Kabzaa on Twitter throws up some interesting conversations among Kannada film aficionados, who are stumped by the lack of urgency from the team of the film in promoting it ahead of its March 17 release. The most hotly discussed topics include how Kabzaa has no buzz around it, in Karnataka, and more so in the rest of the country, even though director-producer R Chandru had two events, one each in Chennai and Hyderabad, already, and the trailer launch is expected this week.

In Hyderabad, leading man Upendra and his co-star Shriya Saran did a few media interviews, but the former did not make it to the Chennai event, leaving it to Chandru, co-producer Alankar Pandian and Shriya. Chandru is yet to make an official announcement about the Mumbai trailer launch, which has been advanced by a day and will be held on March 2. The stars of the film have not done any promotional interviews with local media yet and there are murmurs that the trailer launch event has been cancelled. Netizens are wondering why Chandru is being lackadaisical about his own film that he spent a good 3-4 years on and a whopping Rs 65-70 crore.

The reason that is being speculated is that Chandru is taking it too easy because he has recovered cost and may even have made profit with the distribution rights sales, audio, satellite and digital rights, with the Hindi OTT rights, some language satellite deals and Kerala and Karnataka distribution, still up for grabs.

“Just 1 month to go for #Kabzaa release....still no buzz about the movie....even in karnataka also... @rchandru_movies promotions not up to the mark....very dull …,” wrote Srinivas Srini, while Shreyans added, “No buzz 🚶 No excitement @rchandru_movies Learn from Tamil Telugu promotions for lyrical song promo bittu glimpse bittu singers hatra matadsi hype rise madtare. Bittid poster ne bittu spoil madkobedi.” “The reason for no promotion is Noland Anna is already in profit sumne yake tale kedsolbeku. At least trailer chanagedre saku,” wrote another Twitter user.