Will Sharan’s Avatara Purusha be the Kannada film to take on the big Tamil-Telugu Sankranti releases?

Comic star Sharan’s next, the two-part Avatara Purusha was initially set to have its first instalment open in movie halls on December 10. However, the makers – producer Pushkara Mallikarjunaiah and director Suni – decided to push it ahead, which industry insiders attribute to two reasons. For starters, at the time, Suni’s film with Ganesh, Sakath was still in theatres and gaining traction and the director did not want to hamper the prospects of his own project by releasing Avatara Purusha only two weeks later. Also, Karnataka was suddenly under an Omicron scare and the team wanted to see if the government would impose restrictions that could eat into their release (business) plans.

With no new pandemic regulations, barring Christmas and New Year season night curfews, the team is now apparently looking at a possible Sankranti release in mid-January 2022. In Karnataka, the Sankranti festive season is generally an open playing field for big releases from Tamil and Telugu, which has been a major point of discussion in Gandhinagar circles recently, given that Kannada filmmakers hardly ever try and give competition and are unwilling to risk a release.

If the latest buzz is to be believed, producer Pushkara Mallikarjunaiah is set to break this routine, by releasing the first instalment of Avatara Purusha during Sankranti (January 14). This, say insiders, is testimony to the team’s immense confidence in the strength of the content in hand, to take on the might of films like RRR, Bheemla Nayak, Radhe Shyam, among others.

Avatara Purusha is a supernatural comedy that pairs Sharan with Ashika Ranganath and stars Saikumar, Srinagara Kitty, Ashutosh Rana, Sudharani and Bhavya, among others, in pivotal roles. The tagline of the first instalment of the film, which has music by Arjun Janya, is Ashta Digbandana Mandalaka and for the second is Trishanku.