Suriya was hooked to Athreya role

Vikram Kumar decodes the success of his latest film ‘24’, its inception and future projects

It’s party time for filmmaker Vikram K Kumar as his 18 months labour,’24’, starring Suriya, is doing steady business across the two Telugu speaking states. “I’m very relieved because there was a big responsibility.

It was a difficult story to tell and sell but we always believed that we are about to tell something exciting and we are glad that we pulled it off,” he begins, adding that kids too have loved the film.

“Whatever I write, I write it in such a way that even kids can come and enjoy because as a kid, I was fascinated by cinema. It’s difficult to simplify and tell an easy story and I worked very hard on it. Most people in the industry are surprised, that the audience have accepted ‘24’.”

While Hollywood film ‘Inception’ was Christopher Nolan’s take on time narrated in a cerebral way, Vikram points out that ‘24’ is his version. “It’s a highly simplified take on time. I tried to fashion it in such a way that our audience will find it interesting and I took more than four years to come up with the final draft. But I learnt a lot and it was fun executing it.”

Films that receive flak on the first day go under the scissors but surprisingly ‘24’ had to be trimmed by 10 minutes. “(Laughs), even I don’t know about this but since it didn’t affect the film, I’m ok with it. May be the duration is a concern. But I’ve found some 10-min short films boring. So it’s not about how long or short your film is it’s about how good your film is.”

From ‘13 B’ to ‘Manam’ to ‘24’, Vikram has always written scripts that are far away from run-of-the-mill variety. Put that to him and he responds, “I like visualising new ideas, otherwise it gets boring. The scenes and dialogues become repetitive. I like to hop genres as its fun and I enjoy the writing process a lot more. It makes screenplay interesting.”

But when was the seed to make a film on time sowed in? “All of us associate time through watch, so making a watch a time machine was again simplifying the story. I remember watching ‘Back to the Future’ 20 times as a kid and getting enamoured by it. It’s my favourite film,” he declares.

Continuing in the same breath, the botanist-turned-filmmaker adds, “Right from my childhood I was drawn to sci-fi films and wanted to make a film on such lines. My only objective was to make those scripts Indianised.

My mother doesn’t watch English films in theatres, so I want her to like my film, for which the content has to be rooted. So if your mom likes your film, it is mostly accepted by all. Women and children should also like your films, and that means you are a good storyteller.

“When I narrated the script to Suriya he was like ‘okay, it’s good’ but what hooked him to the script was Athreya role. He was very excited when I said that he would also play the villain. I believe you need actors who enjoy doing such roles.”

All of Vikram’s films have a clock-connect, ask him is he superstitious? Breaking into a laugh, he says, “Clocks are beautiful machines to shoot, no doubt. Yeah, probably.”

Admitting that Samantha and Nithya are his lucky charms, he notes, “They are great human beings and fantastic actors. I hope they do all my films.”
Revealing about his future projects, he shares, “I just started writing a prequel to ‘24’ but its challenging because I have to surprise the audience now.

So the writing needs to be sharp and compact and I have to think beyond the fan fiction. I’m doing a film with Allu Arjun next and I also narrated a storyline to Mahesh Babu, which he liked.”