Kannada movie big wigs not afraid of OTT, to meet CM next week

With the Kannada film industry racing up to produce mega budget, multilingual productions, the continued effect of coronavirus pandemic has been really hurting them. This was admitted to by none other than the top Kannada movie star Shiva Rajkumar who also wanted a relook at the government policies on release of subsidies and restriction on the number of personnel during shooting to around 40.

With the Karnataka government stepping in and announcing that a Kannada Cinema Promotion Board would be constituted, the coming months will see a lot of action, one assumes to bring the movie industry back on rails.

There have been discussions about the release date of KGF 2, the much expected three-language film in which Sanjay Dutt is playing the antagonist. With Dutt likely to be away to the US to take care of his personal health issues, it is being whispered that one fight sequence is pending which will delay the film release from its original date of October 23.

The Deputy Chief Minister, C N Ashwath Narayan has announced that a meeting is scheduled with the CM B S Yediyurappa next week who has shown enough interest to support the industry. For his part, Shiva Rajkumar also has said that the film industry is resilient enough to handle its problems on its own without worrying about the OTT platforms which have started screening original Kannada films on their platform from the last few weeks.