Bollywood town directors donning greasepaint for south films

Directors, donning greasepaint is not an unusual trend. Quite a few in Telugu and Tamil film industries have had the acting bug biting them to make them simultaneously perform the roles of being before and behind the camera. Names like Dasari Narayana Rao, K Bhagyaraj and R Narayana Murthy readily pop up to name a few to justify this observation.

Villains from the Hindi film industry beginning with Ashish Vidyarthi to Pradeep Rawat to Ravi Kishan have been accepted over the years in the evil doers’ category in southern cinema too. What is interesting is that like their southern counterparts, helmsmen from Hindi film industry too have taken a shine to acting out the roles of bad men in Telugu and Tamil cinema.

In the past few years, reputed director Mahesh Manjrekar, who has made underworld don films with stars like Sanjay Dutt, other than many other family socials in Hindi and Marathi, has been approached for the antagonist role in both Telugu and Tamil cinema. He was seen as the main villain in the NTR starrer ‘Adhurs’ and later went on to trade punches with ‘thala’ Ajith Kumar in his 2013 flick ‘Aarambham’.

Following his senior’s footsteps, maverick director Anurag Kashyap, who has himself revelled in creating dark cinema has taken to playing rough roles. In the A R Murugadoss remake ‘Akira’ of a Tamil hit ‘Mouna Guru’, Kashyap relished enacting such an act. Now news comes out that he is the main bad boy in a Nayanthara starrer ‘Imaikka Nodigal’ a Tamil-Telugu bi-lingual, the teaser of which went viral recently and is being wrapped up rapidly in Bengaluru and Chennai.

Director Ajay Gnanamuthu who came up with a thriller film ‘Demonte Colony’ which was appreciated felt Kashyap could fit the role the best and it remains to be seen how his gut feeling has come up on screen. Along with a steady influx of Hindi heroines, villains, one should also add directors to the list of those who want to be seen in southern cinema, one can safely surmise.