Vikrant Rona’s Hindi version will dominate its overseas release

When the makers of Vikrant Rona announced their partnership with One Twenty 8 media for its overseas release, not many understood the significance of that move. Turns out that one of the partners of the distribution wing is Kannada producer-distributor Yogish Dwarakish of Dwarakish Cinema, who understands the overseas market of Kannada films well. Yogish and his partners, Akash Ameya Jain and Phanindra Kumar, will take Kiccha Sudeep’s film to the world market. While the target is 55 countries, at the moment, release plans have been affirmed in close to 35, with more to be added in the coming days, based on the buzz created by the film.

Speaking to us, Yogish explains that although the film is being dubbed into a handful of foreign languages as well, the bulk of the release will be in Indian languages, targeting the Indian diaspora abroad. “Among the Indian audience, the Hindi-speaking populace is fairly large, as a result of which, Vikrant Rona’s Hindi version will dominate the overseas release. For instance, if I bring the Kannada version to Kannadigas, Tamil to Tamilians and so on and so forth for the south Indians abroad, for everyone above the Vindhyas, whether you speak Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarathi, Bhojpuri, Bengali or even Odia, among others, the Hindi version will work and this segment of audience is fairly large,” explains Yogish. The filmmaker-distributor adds that they have confirmed 1,200 screens at the moment, which is likely to increase in the days to come, once the film has been censored for theatrical screening in all the regions that it is being released in.

Directed by Anup Bhandari, and produced by Shalini and Manjunath Gowda for Shalini Artss, in association with Alankar Pandian of Invenio Origin, the film is set to release in 3D on July 28. Starring Sudeep in the lead, it also had Anup’s brother Nirup and Neetha Ashok in pivotal roles, with Bollywood siren Jacqueline Fernandez in a cameo.