Meet Kabzaa’s young Arkeshwara – R Chandru’s son Chiru

In the four years since R Chandru began talking about his next film Kabzaa, a project that he said would be his most ambitious one to date, in terms of story-telling and making, one always assumed that he filmmaker was so passionate about it for these reasons. Well, now that the film is in theatres, turns out that Chandru had an even bigger reason to be proud of Kabzaa and call it the next big thing in Sandalwood. He was introducing his son Chiru. The youngster got to play Upendra’s younger version in the pre-Independence portions and even falls for the young Madhumati, setting the stage for their romance. In the film, Chiru is young Arkeshwara, the son of a martyred freedom fighter, who is the more peace-loving of two siblings.

Kabzaa, which released in theatres on March 17, has received disastrous reviews across the board, with critics and audiences panning it for being nothing but a cheap KGF remake. In the run-up to the film’s release, Chandru had always maintained that his film would look, feel and even sound like KGF, but that the story was drastically different. Turns out that the story wasn’t very different either. Sudeep’s much-publicized cameo turned out to be nothing after all, with the actor filling in more as narrator than actor.

Despite the negative reviews, though, Kabzaa is believed to have raked in close to Rs 16 crore worldwide on Day 1, which is a career best for Upendra. According to sources, the film is a complete wash-out in the Hindi and Telugu belt, but bookings have been picking up in Karnataka. The film is rumoured to have been made at a budget of nearly Rs 70 crore, of which a major chunk has already been recovered with pre-release sales of satellite and digital rights.