Pushkar-Gayathri, the filmmaker duo, say they never felt the need to “tone down” their original Tamil blockbuster Vikram Vedha for the Hindi remake because the Hindi audience is receptive to complex stories.
The 2017 Tamil blockbuster starring R. Madhavan and Vijay Sethupathi will see a Hindi adaptation of the same name with Hrithik Roshan and Saif Ali Khan in the lead roles.
Vikram Vedha follows the story of a cop who is on the lookout for a gangster. When the gangster voluntarily surrenders himself and explains to the officer his backstory, the officer’s perceptions of virtue and evil are challenged.
Hrithik plays a gangster in the Hindi version, a role played by Vijay Sethupathi in the original film. Saif Ali Khan will be seen as a cop, a role played by R Madhavan in the Tamil film.
For far too long, the audience has been “underestimated” according to Pushkar, but the success of the Tamil film has reaffirmed their conviction that good stories are always welcomed.
“For too long, we, as an industry, have underestimated the audience. For us, when Vikram Vedha was released in Tamil, I remember that night the big thing was, ‘Would people get it? Would people enjoy it?’. Somewhere, there has been a positive reaffirmation from that experience,” the director told PTI.
When asked if they felt the need to dilute the narrative to reach a wider Hindi audience, he unflinchingly said, “No, not at all”.
The filmmaker claimed it’s a myth that audiences aren’t ready for complicated storylines and that Vikram Vedha had people coming back for repeat viewings even after it was released on OTT.
“The idea that you have to keep it extremely simple for it to connect to a lot of people, that paradigm has changed. Maybe it was never a paradigm at all, it might have been a forced paradigm on the industry,” he said.
“There are more complicated stories which are working now. People are enjoying those... You tell the story well, don’t keep it so abstruse that people don’t get it. You don’t need to simplify your story,” he added.
Gayathri explained that the goal with their upcoming film is to make their work accessible without sacrificing storytelling.
“It is not about dialing it down, it is about not getting too carried away and making it indulgent to the point that a person in a cinema hall can’t enjoy the experience. That treatment is important,” she added.
Even though the film is a remake of their smash hit, Pushkar said they were not “obsessed” with their original creation.
“Way too many creators get obsessed with their work. For us, it was still about story and storytelling. We work for the scene, story and everything to fall into place. We are trying to tell a story, not doing a piece of painting, sculpting something for yourself,” he added.
The duo are now anticipating the release of Suzhal- The Vortex, a Tamil Prime Video series that they wrote and created.
The series will premiere on Prime Video on June 17.
