Filmmaker Venkat Prabhu says it’s challenging to work with a star like Suriya because he doesn’t settle for anything mediocre and likes to push everybody around him towards excellence.
Venkat and Suriya have teamed up for the first time in Masss , which releases in cinemas on Friday.
“The reason why Masss has come out well is because of the extra push from Suriya. He doesn’t settle for mediocrity and pushes himself and people around him to do much better. He certainly pushed me towards excellence,” said Prabhu.
He admits that working with Suriya was “challenging”, but the effort was “totally worth it”.
Talking about Masss , Prabhu said, “It isn’t actually a horror-comedy because typically in such films, the laughs are generated out of slapstick humour involving the comedians. We haven’t followed such a pattern. I believe we’ve worked on something fresh and hope audiences will like it.”
“We included a shot of Suriya as a vampire in the film’s teaser to create some curiosity because now people have started to wonder what genre the film really belongs to.”
Prabhu added that they aren’t cashing in on the latest trend of successful horror comedies.
“When I started writing the script, which was in last January, hardly any horror comedies had released. It was only a few months later, a slew of films in this genre started coming out.”
His new film is also high on visual effects (VFX), and Prabhu says they have done justice to all the scenes featuring it.
“There are quite a few scenes with VFX, but we have used it in a way nobody would realise it. We aren’t promising an awe-inspiring VFX experience. The whole purpose of using computer graphics in a movie is that audiences shouldn’t know where exactly it has been used. We have a small fantasy element and we have done full justice to it with the help of VFX,” he said.
Masss , which is produced by Studio Green, also features Nayantara, Pranitha Subhash, Samuthirakani and Parthiban in important roles.