Kantara Chapter 1 Box Office Collection Day 1: Rishab Shetty’s epic film goes toe-to-toe with Rajinikanth’s Coolie, earns Rs 60 crore

Earlier this year, Hombale Films, which also produced Kantara Chapter 1, had a major success with Mahavatar Narsimha. The film made Rs 250 crore in India, and Rs 325 crore worldwide. Kantara Chapter 1’s start has been almost as good as Ranjinikanth’s Coolie, which made Rs 65 crore on its first day in India. However, it fell short of the Rs 63 crore opening posted by Pawan Kalyan’s They Call Him OG.

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The second part of the franchise was announced after the monstrous success of the original film in 2022. It has been in the making since March 2023 and since then, there have been many reports about accidents on the set of the film. Reportedly, a few months ago, a boat carrying around 30 people, including director Rishab Shetty, capsized mid-stream. Fortunately, there were no fatalities or severe injuries. In 2024, a bus carrying the crew members overturned resulting in a few injuries. At the time, Hombale Films said that the injuries were not severe.

Previously, three artistes who worked on the film passed away. In a chat with SCREEN, Rishab spoke about the same and said, “Definitely it’s a huge loss, but we cannot connect it to the film. It’s about human life, out of the three people we lost, two were junior artists, one of them had not even reached our set, he was on the way when he had some health issues, and later we got to know he had a heart attack. We sent the manager there to take him to the hospital and get the post-mortem and other formalities sorted.”

Talking about the second death, Rishab said that this too, did not happen on their set. “We were rehearsing in another town, there was a temple, and a river was close by. There was a board that said it was an accident-prone area, but youngsters want to explore; he went there, and the accident happened,” he said and also remembered the demise of actor Rakesh Poojary. “Rakesh Poojary’s loss was huge; he has played a prominent character in the film. He was with me for many days and was like my brother,” he said. Rakesh died of a heart attack weeks after the shoot of Kantara Chapter 1 wrapped.