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| Edited By: Mugdha Kapoor |Source: DNA webdesk |Updated: Aug 19, 2022, 11:28 AM IST
Nikhil Siddhartha starrer Karthikeya 2 has been the talk of the town ever since its release on August 13. Made on a budget of Rs 30 crore, the film showed great jump in the Hindi circuits as word of mouth spread and the audience showed interest in watching it in the theatres. Directed by Chandoo Mondeti and also starring Anupama Parameswaran in the lead role opposite Nikhil, Karthikeya 2 is having a dream run at the box office, particularly in the Hindi belt where its shows were increased from a mere 50 to 1500+ after the viewers preferred watching the Telugu-language adventure thriller film over movies headlined by Bollywood superstars Aamir Khan and Akshay Kumar, namely Laal Singh Chaddha and Raksha Bandhan.
Internationally too, Karthikeya 2 has been receiving an overwhelming response as the film is inching closer to the $1 million mark in overseas box office collection. The film's 6 days India gross collection currently stands at Rs 34.50 crore, as per sacnilk.com.
Keeping in mind the buzz around the film and the phenomenal box office success story that it has become, we at DNA caught up with Nikhil Siddhartha and spoke to him about the movie's success, his thought on trade experts' prediction that Karthikeya 2 will surpass the box office collections of Laal Singh Chaddha and Raksha Bandhan and know his opinion on the rising boycott trend on social media.
Talking about Karthikeya 2's phenomenal success at the box office, Nikhil SIddhartha, who was in Delhi for the promotion of his film, said, "This is really shocking because we never expected the film to take off so big. It started on seven screens, now we are showing it on 2500 screens. This is very exciting news. I think this film cannot be compared with anything else because this is a stand-alone Indian film that represents Indian culture. I am so happy that this film needs to reach the maximum number of eyeballs, so not just in Telugu, we released it in Malayalam, Hindi, and everywhere. And today, when we are getting such a response, it's really mind-blowing. I still have goosebumps thinking about it. And here we are in Delhi today, we have around 200 shows. In other cities also like Patna, Junagadh, Jaipur, Udaipur, everywhere this film is running house-full, so I'm very excited."
Ask him where the idea for Karthikeya 2 originated as the film's plot revolves around the lost city of Dwarka the film is centred around Sri Krishna's anklet and Karthikeya's (played by Nikhil Siddharth) quest to find it, Nikhil told DNA, "I do believe that we look around for stories, but our Mahabharata, Ramayana, our Indian culture, and history has got so many stories. People do not know what exactly happened after the avatar of Lord Krishna ended and his legacy. People know about Mahabharata, people know how he lived in Vrindavan and Mathura, but we took an unknown story, and today we showed the reality of what happened. People are loving it, they are taking their kids, older people are coming along. It's exciting to see such a response."
Since the subject of Karthikeya 2 is on religious lines, and the current scenario in the country is such that actors are careful of what they speak, makers are cautious of what they show in their film, when we asked Nikhil did he ever fear a backlash or a call for ban on his film, he said, "We showed the reality, so, we never had that fear. We were doing nothing wrong. From day 1, we had the support of every Indian... so this film does not belong to any religion. We are talking about our Bharat, we are talking about how Ram Rajya used to exist from Europe to Indonesia. We are talking about really interesting points, specially about the sunken city of Dwarka which exists down there but many people don't know about it." He added, "The first part of Karthikeya was all about 'is God there or not', in part 2 we talk about 'what is God?', so we were never afraid."
Talking about how his film's phenomenal success is being compared to the success of The Kashmir Files, Nikhil said, "I think this is because of the producer of The Kashmir Files, Abhishek Agarwal (who has also produced our film). But I believe we are very similar to The Kashmir Files which raised a very important point about the genocide that happened and it provided justice to so many people. Here, we are raising the point about the truth of our Indian culture, which has not been talked about. And that's the reason why people are flocking to the theatres to see how exactly we portrayed this. And I think our director has done a great job celebrating our Indian culture."
When we asked Nikhil to share his thoughts on trade experts' predictions that Karthikeya 2's box office collection might overtake that of Aamir Khan's Laal SIngh Chaddha and Akshay Kumar's Raksha Bandhan, Nikhil said, "I do not talk about box office collections because that does not matter much. Our film reaching more people is important. So, we are not comparing ourselves with any film. We believe that every film should be successful and I am happy that we are getting our space. I'm thankful to the audience, especially the Hindi-speaking audience for accepting this film and promoting it themselves."
Finally, sharing his opinion on boycott calls on social media and the North vs South debate, Nikhil told DNA, "First of all, there is no South and North. There is one India. We have Anupam Kher sir (in our movie) who is from Mumbai, and Anupama who is from Kerala and I am from Hyderabad, so there is nothing. It's just Indian cinema and I am so happy that this barrier is being broken and all films are getting an equal opportunity to reach the people."
On boycott trends, Nikhil stated, "I believe trends come and go, but good films last forever and Karthikeya 2 is one good film."
