At a press meet held recently, the distributors of the Kannada movie The Villain disclosed that the film had made Rs 60 crore during the first weekend and the collections would soon reach the Rs 100 crore mark. The film hit the marquee on October 18 as a Dussehra release and is expected to reach the magic figure in 15 days’ time. If this happens, The Villain will be the first film in Sandalwood to reach the landmark number. Well, we need to wait and see if it happens. It is worth mentioning here that the movie collected Rs 20 crore on day one at the box office. This makes it the highest grosser on the first day for any film released in Karnataka till date.

Interestingly, the highest grosser in the Kannada film till date happens to be the Puneeth Rajkumar starrer Raajakumara. This film went on to collect Rs 60 crore at the box office.

Directed by Prem, The Villain has Shiva Rajkumar and Kiccha Sudeep sharing screen space for the first time. With two of the top stars in Sandalwood teaming up for the film, it was expected that it would take such a grand opening. Amy Jackson made her debut in the Kannada film industry with this flick. Others in the star cast include Srikanth, Mithun Chakraborty and Sruthi Hariharan. Arjun Janya has composed tunes for this flick while Girish R Gowda has cranked the camera.

The Villain has been bankrolled by CR Manohar under his banner Tanvi – Shanvi Films on a budget of Rs 45 crore. According to reports, the producer managed to recover more than half of the budget through the pre-release business. With the first day collections breaking records, this multi-starrer seems to be headed towards breaking quite a few other records in the Kannada film industry.

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(Content provided by Digital Native)