Here’s another serving of Pizza with the same toppings. The producers of the well-received Pizza hit upon the idea of Pizza 2 when young software professional and short filmmaker Deepan came up with a script that, like the original, combined horror and con genres.
“ Pizza had just released when the idea for Pizza 2 – The Villa dawned on me. I wrote the script in three weeks and submitted it to the producer, who thought of building it up as a franchise,” says Deepan, who has scripted and also directing it. As Gnanavel Raja’s Studio Green stepped into bankroll this film, it was widely rumoured that Pizza 2 will have a big star playing the lead. Instead, the film went to the floors with Ashok Selvan, who plays one of the significant roles in Soodhu Kavvum , in the lead. “We couldn’t rope in the star we were keen to cast because of date problems,” says Deepan without mentioning the name of the star. This doesn’t mean the film is not ‘big’, insist Deepan and Deepak Kumar Padhy, the film’s cinematographer. “The best technical crew has been put together. We managed to get experts from Australia to help us with the motion capture technology,” says Deepak.
All the three, the director, cinematographer and the lead actor are wary of the expectations and the obvious comparisons with the original. “The pressure to deliver is always there. Not only because this is the second instalment of a successful film, but also for our own careers,” says Deepak.
Twenty-four-year-old Ashok Selvan, who plays a 30-year-old writer in the film, agrees that comparisons are inevitable. “It’s obvious that my work in the film will be compared to that of Vijay Sethupathi in Pizza. It’s a big break for me and I hope that I will be able to deliver what is expected of me,” he says.
