Rakshit Shetty is all set to arrive on the big screen in style as Narayana the coming Christmas weekend. The much-anticipated film, Avane Srimannarayana, which received a U/A certification, will see a pan-India release, but on different dates. The period cop drama will first hit theatres in Karnataka on December 27, followed by a Telugu release on January 1, 2020. The Tamil and Malayalam versions will release on January 3, 2020, with makers planning to release the film in Hindi on January 16.
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Releasing the film on different dates is part of the ASN team’s strategy, says Pushkar Mallikarjunaiah. “The hype from the Kannada release will spill over to the other languages. Meanwhile, good marketing in other regions and word of mouth will push for a big opening as well. That’s one of the reasons why we chose to go with different release dates, all in the span of one week,” says Pushkar, who is jointly producing the film with HK Prakash.
Bagging rights
Well-known distributors and producers have bagged the rights of ASN in different languages. While Pushkar Films and Mohan Films will take up the distribution rights in Karnataka, producer Dil Raju will be distributing ASN to the Telugu market. Screen Scene Entertainers, who released the Vijay-starrer Bigil, have bagged the distribution rights of the Tamil version. Tomichan Mulakuppadam, the producer and distributor of Pulimurugan, will be releasing ASN in Malayalam. The makers are still in talks for the Hindi distribution rights, which will be confirmed by the end of December.
The period drama has been set in the ‘80s and has Shanvi Srivastav playing the female lead alongside Balaji Manohar, Pramod Shetty and Achyuth Kumar. Karm Chawla has handled the cinematography of ASN, which also has two music directors, namely Charan Raj and Ajaneesh Lokanath.