Director Siraj has a strong Tirupati connection with his producers Raj and DK. They too hail from Tirupati but when he narrated his stories to the duo, they were either not considered or he was told to improvise on them. Finally to his surprise his producers did like one story and within half an hour he got a call, asking him to develop it; within three months his script was okayed, and thus D For Dhopidi came into being. He avers, “We wanted Dhopidi… actually, but that was already registered. This is a tentative title but we might stick to this as it sounds catchy. It is a crime comedy and all the characters are like guys next door. They are four characters caught in extraordinary circumstances and what do they do to come out of it is the story. We are in post production now and three days of patch work and a song is left to be completed. The release is planned towards the end of October. Melanie from Love Lies and Seeta is playing the lead with Sandeep Kishan. Naveen did a small part in Life Is Beautiful and Rakesh is relatively new. Tanikella Bharani plays an important part and I had an opportunity to direct two directors Deva Katta and Raj Pippala.”
Siraj is a Malayali from Kerala and speaks Telugu very fluently and nurtured a childhood dream to become a filmmaker. “Like all parents, mine were too concerned about my future and wanted me to pursue academics first. I did MCA and discontinued and on the pretext of doing Masters went to the UK and again played truant. I did some crash courses on filmmaking and made a short film. It got selected and we were 18 who got selected for the Vijay Amritraj Show called Gateway To Hollywood . We were given a task and after the elimination round one of us would be the winner and would be given an opportunity to direct for Amritraj’s company. I reached the sixth round and was eliminated. Then later I got in touch with Raj and DK and assisted their Shor In The City .” Siraj says there are very few crime comedies in Telugu movie industry and he hoped to engage the audiences with his compact and hilarious script.
