When Indian star and filmmaker Rishab Shetty’s “Kantara” released in 2022, few could have predicted that a Kannada-language film steeped in local folklore would turn into a cultural phenomenon.
Shot on a modest budget, the film grossed more than $50 million worldwide, ran for over 100 days in Indian cinemas and built a second life on Prime Video, where its haunting imagery and hypnotic song “Varaha Roopam” found audiences far beyond South India. “Kantara” became shorthand for the potential of Kannada-language cinema to compete on a national and global scale, alongside Hombale Films’ other breakout franchise, “K.G.F.”
Shetty, who wrote, directed and headlined the original, is now returning with a prequel: “Kantara A Legend: Chapter 1.” Set centuries before the events of the first film, it promises to dive deeper into the forest mythology, rituals and belief systems that captivated audiences the first time around.
The weight of expectation is enormous, but Shetty insists he keeps it in perspective. “Excitement and expectation are always there, but I keep it at one level,” he tells Variety. “Expectation should not pressurize the script, the story, or the filmmaking process. We don’t take it as pressure, but we take it as responsibility. That responsibility makes us put in more effort — in story, in making, in performance, in execution.”
Music was a crucial part of the first film’s success, with composer B. Ajaneesh Loknath’s “Varaha Roopam” inspiring everything from goosebumps in theaters to TikTok remixes. Shetty knows that audiences expect something equally potent in the prequel. “Every film I direct is musical — songs are always very important to me,” he says. “Some things we can’t recreate, but we can create new things. Definitely there are songs in Chapter 1, and I think people will like them very much.”
Where the first “Kantara” often relied on atmosphere and raw physicality, “Chapter 1” escalates to epic scale. Battle sequences featuring thousands of junior artists were staged with the help of three stunt choreographers — from the Bulgarian, Kannada and Tamil industries. “Safety is something we thought about a lot, we planned a lot,” Shetty notes. “The technical team was very big. Locations were deep inside the forest, very difficult to access. The art department, costume team, technical crew — everyone had to carry their responsibilities perfectly. That is why we could achieve it. It was teamwork.”
The dual challenge of starring and directing on such sequences forced Shetty into constant role-switching. “In some action sequences I was performing, and at the same time, in the background there were issues,” he recalls. “Immediately I would grab the mic, go to a height and talk to the artists. It used to switch immediately between actor and director. But the character I play is also like that — so it felt organic.”
The film’s setting demanded meticulous world-building. “There are no visual references, only some paintings,” Shetty explains. “So we met professors and historians, we discussed and researched. How palaces looked, how ports were, what trade was happening — we had to visualize and establish that on screen.” Archaeological records and oral histories suggest Karnataka’s coast had active maritime links with Arabia and beyond during the period. “We had to show the variety — kingdoms, ports, tribes — the differences,” Shetty says. “Cinematography, costume and design all had to reflect that.” His team worked with historians to translate fragmented evidence into cinematic reality.
Shetty stresses that while the film has grandeur, authenticity remains at its core. “It has to be cinematic, but it also has to feel real,” he says. “The rituals, the dialects, the costumes — all had to be grounded, even when the storytelling is larger than life.”
From the moment the first “Kantara” was announced, producer Hombale Films used a visual motif to build intrigue: a burning half-circle in the first poster, later extended through successive reveals. The latest poster shows a well, fire raging, with a figure leaping outward. “For me it is all connected,” Shetty says. “From the beginning it is that circle. Now we are showing the well. I don’t know what all stories are inside the well. There are many stories in the well.” That cryptic remark hints at something larger: “Kantara” is not just a two-film saga but potentially a universe of interconnected tales, rooted in folklore and spirituality, yet open-ended enough to grow into sequels, prequels and spin-offs.
Shetty has been candid about the physical risks of filming — working in dangerous locations, pushing his body through extreme action scenes. “Risk is always there,” he admits. “Life itself has risk. You accept the challenge and move forward.” He describes the shoot as “very heavy” but believes divine blessings carried the crew through. “The story demanded certain things, and we had to work hard to achieve them,” he says. “That was the priority.”
“Kantara” arrived at a pivotal moment for Kannada cinema, riding on the momentum of the “KGF” films and titles like “777 Charlie” and “Vikrant Rona.” But Shetty cautions against assuming a constant upward curve. “Ups and downs happen in life, in every industry,” he says.
“’K.G.F.’ gave a route, a recognition. ‘Kantara’ also went in that route. But success rate is very minimum, maybe 5-6%. What we can do is experiment, try new things. The audience decides.” He points out that even in the single-screen era, only a handful of Kannada films ran successfully for weeks at a stretch. “The perspective was always skewed toward hits,” he explains. “Now the industry is bigger, but the principle remains the same: not every film will work. You have to keep experimenting.”
For Shetty, who has other large scale projects on Indian warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and Hindu God Hanuman in development, everything is currently subsumed into “Kantara.” “For three years I have been completely inside ‘Kantara,’” he says. “After release, maybe I can see what else is happening outside. Right now it is only this circle.”
“Kantara A Legend: Chapter 1” releases Oct. 2 worldwide in the Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali and English languages.
