His next film was a gangster film called "Om," which was released in 1995. The film starred Shivrajkumar and casted real gangsters in its cast. "Om" became a blockbuster and went on to be one of the highest-grossing Kannada films of its time and made news at a national level. Upendra became an overnight star director. With "Om", Upendra again reunited actress Prema with Shivanna earlier they had acted in a film called Savyasachi. "Om" was also remade into several languages – the Hindi version was called Arjun Pandit and had Sunny Deol playing Shivrajkumar's role.