'Kantara: Chapter 1' Advance Bookings Surge, Challenging Blockbusters

On October 1st, 2025, the advance booking for Rishab Shetty's 'Kantara: Chapter 1' has reached an impressive milestone, nearing the ₹20 crore mark. The supernatural action-drama prequel has already earned over ₹18 crore in pre-release sales, showcasing its strong appeal among audiences.

The film has been particularly successful in the Kannada-speaking region, where it has sold over 2.14 lakh tickets for 1,780 shows. Additionally, the movie has resonated with Tamil and Telugu audiences, selling 39,270 and 33,492 tickets respectively. The Malayalam version has also performed exceptionally well, with 53,957 tickets sold across just 1,236 shows.

However, the prequel has struggled to build similar momentum in the Hindi belt, where it has generated just over ₹1.9 crore in advance bookings, with approximately 57,000 tickets sold for 6,393 shows. This pales in comparison to the blockbuster success of films like 'KGF 2', which had advance sales of ₹17.95 crore (without block seats) on its opening day in the Kannada version alone, and 'Chhaava', which recorded day-one advance sales of ₹13.79 crore (without block seats).

Despite these challenges, 'Kantara: Chapter 1' has already sold over 4 lakh tickets for its opening day across India, indicating its strong potential to captivate audiences and potentially challenge the box office dominance of recent blockbusters.