Guwahati, Sept 6: The third sequel to Assamese martial arts-comedy trilogy ‘Local Kung Fu’ was released in over 150 screens across the Northeast on Thursday, actor-director Kenny Deori Basumatary said.
With the release of the movie, Assam’s film industry, for the first time, has a trilogy.
Made with a budget of around Rs 75 lakh, ‘Local Kung Fu 3’ retains most of the actors featured in the earlier two editions, Basumatary told PTI.
“People gave us so much love for the first two LKF films that it was inevitable that we would want to entertain them again with a third film. But we started working on it only when we had a really solid story that would stand on its own,” he added.
Basumatary, who has acted in several Bollywood films such as ‘Jawan’, ‘Mary Kom’ and ‘Yaara’, asserted that judging by the audience reaction on the opening day, the team believes it has achieved what it wanted to.
On the film’s subject, he said that the movie releasing on Teachers’ Day is a wonderful coincidence because the relationship between teachers and students is the most important part of the film.
“We have one epic fight shot with five heroes and 24 villains that goes on for 72 steps without a cut. That’s one of our highlights as we wanted to show that a skilled team can put together great fight scenes without a thousand cuts per minute,” said Basumatary, who is himself a martial arts expert.
He said that a total of 38 fighters were hired from Guwahati, Morigaon and Kokrajhar. Among them is the National Games Taekwondo Bronze medallist Rishabh Choudhury, who along with his brother Ravi featured in an important sequence in the film.
“The team has put together big fight scenes without using any wires or cables,” Basumatary said, adding most of the lead actors are his old friends from the earlier movies who learnt martial arts together during their student days.
Asked if a fourth sequel will be made, the producer-director of Assam’s only action-comedy trilogy said, “There might be LKF-4 in future. But again, it has to be a worthy, exciting story.”
‘Local Kung Fu’, which was released in 2013, was made with a meagre budget of only Rs 95,000. It became a sensation after it was released online and the film’s characters turned out to be household names.
‘Local Kung Fu 2’ was released in 2017 and it was also a huge hit commercially. LKF-3 was released across the state and other parts of Northeast on the occasion of Teacher’s Day in over 150 screens in 70 cinema halls, Basumatary said. Talking about releasing the film in other parts of the country, he said it has hit the screens in Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland along with those in Assam.
“In the coming days, we will try as many cities as possible. But we do not know it yet as it is not completely in our hands. We will definitely try to release it in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad,” Basumatary added. (PTI)
