Vikrant Rona (Hindi) vs Ek Villain Returns vs Ramarao On Duty: Can the Kiccha Sudeep starrer leverage the long opening weekend?

The upcoming and final weekend of the month of July is poised interestingly with three exciting releases in store. The films, namely Vikrant Rona, Ek Villain Returns, and Ramarao On Duty are starkly different from one another in terms of tone, subject matter, and scale but the post-pandemic trends have revealed that the audiences have grown quite picky with their time and money. In other words, 'value for money’ is the top and perhaps the only criteria for a film to succeed, and one can’t categorize the audience based on factors like sensibility as before.

Vikrant Rona, the latest pan-India offering from the Kannada Film Industry, gets a head start in this vein with the film releasing a day before the conventional Friday (on July 28) in hopes of leveraging the long weekend. While the film remains uncontended in the Kannada circuit, Ek Villain Returns could pose a stiff challenge to the Hindi dubbed release of the Kiccha Sudeep starrer, should the ensemble film gather positive reviews. Ek Villain Returns is the second film of the Mohit Suri-led franchise and although the previous installment released as many as 8 years ago, one could expect a similar outing at the box office.

Ek Villain Returns stars John Abraham, Disha Patani, Arjun Kapoor, and Tara Sutaria with Ekta Kapoor, Shobha Kapoor, Bhushan Kumar (T-Series) and Krishan Kumar producing it. The film releases on July 29.

To put things in perspective, the most recent advance booking figures reveal Ek Villain Returns’ edge over the Hindi version of Vikrant Rona: the latter is currently placed at Rs. 50 Lakhs with its advance ticket sales with the former inching towards the Rs. 85 Lakhs mark as of July 27 (at 7:34 pm). Both figures are the gross values.

The advance sales reports suggest that the 3D version of Vikrant Rona is the current favorite among moviegoers. The original and Kannada version of the film will most likely remain the top contributor to its overall business but thanks to the standards set by K.G.F: Chapter 2 (Hindi) that the expectations from every major South Indian release are shot up than usual.

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Vikrant Rona also releases in Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, and English (only select centers). With Sudeep being a well-recognized actor across languages, the film has every chance of breaking through the present tough market. However, as pointed out already, a lot would depend on the audience and critical review on the opening day.

On the other hand, the Ravi Teja starrer Ramarao On Duty can be expected to offer strong competition in the Telugu-dominated regions of the country.