Nag Ashwin Justifies 3-hour-long Runtime Of Kalki 2898 AD: If It Was Ashwatthama’s Story…

Nag Ashwin is basking in the success of his recent outing Kalki 2898 AD. The film, set 6000 years after the Kurukshetra war, features Prabhas, Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, Disha Patani and Kamal Haasan in pivotal roles. While the film has garnered a thunderous response at the box office, a section of society shared their criticism of it as well. A section of the audience thought that the film could have been edited to make the runtime shorter. Kalki 2898 AD has a record runtime of 3 hours and 1 minute, making it one of the longest movies in cinema. 

Nag Ashwin justifies Kalki 2898 AD’s long runtime 

In a recent interview, Nag Ashwin spoke about how he handled the criticism of Kalki 2898 AD. The filmmaker especially spoke about the exponentially long runtime of sci-fiction. Speaking about the same, he asserted that while he is taking all criticisms in a positive stride, he also justified it. 

In a conversation with DNA, Nag Ashwin shared, “I am taking all the criticism positively because most of them are valid too. Just to understand that this was the first part and it required a setup and all the characters needed to be introduced. Somebody was comparing it to Mahanati (his previous film) but there she was one character and it was her story. If this (Kalki) was only Ashwatthama’s story, we could have done it differently but there were so many major stars and big characters that needed to be intertwined. It was a tricky screenplay to get right. Maybe we could have done better but it is a learning.” He also added that the majority of the feedback he has received has been largely positive. He added, “I am taking it all positively because if people feel that 6 or 7 minutes could have been edited or something of the sort, then the same people are also loving the second half or the interval and the Kurukshetra sequences. So you love 2 hours 54 minutes of it and I’ll take that.” 

Nag Ashwin on the great reception of Kalki 2898 AD in tier 2 cities

In the same conversation, the director shared that he is overwhelmed by the film’s response in smaller cities. Talking about the reception of the film, the filmmaker said, “Relief, because all of us put a lot at stake in this film, financially, time-wise, and in terms of energy.” He further added, “Now it’s coming back in the form of box office and love from all the places. And the love is coming from places like Delhi and Punjab and small centres like Tonk in Rajasthan, which is great because we rarely expect a film to travel to very small centres in rural Rajasthan.”

As per PTI, the success of the Hindi version of Kalki 2898 AD has brought a dash of black to the Hindi film industry in 2024 that was otherwise in the red with big-budget box office failures Bade Miyan Chote Miyan, Maidan and Yodha.