He may have started his career with two remakes, but director Vijay has, since then, gone on to make a film in almost every genre. How many directors would make an action thriller like Thaandavam after a period film like Madrasapattinam ? How could the same director have made Saivam , a beautiful little kids film, coming out of a mass entertainer like Thalaivaa ? And now, he’s ready with another first, a “horror thriller”. “I’m considering a sci-fi film next,” Vijay laughs, “I would have covered almost all the genres then. You only live once anyway; why make the same films again and again?”
But this jump to horror isn’t Vijay checking a few boxes on a to-do list. He says the idea for Abhinetri came quite naturally, over a conversation on cinema with Hollywood writer-director Paul Aaron. “I’d completed a lot of the post-production work for Saivam in Los Angeles and I was introduced to Paul through sound designer Kunal Rajan. Paul watched Saivam and we got talking about movies. It’s in the course of our chats that we came up with this one-liner for Abhinetri . Of course, we had to Indianise that concept so we could develop it into a trilingual.”
He’s just as excited about bringing Prabhu Deva back to Tamil cinema. “He’s one of our biggest directors, but like I often tell him, we need him just as much as an actor. Not many can match his comic timing and his ability to do action scenes. I’m glad to be bringing him back to Tamil.”
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The film, produced by Kona Venkat, Prabhu Deva and M.V.V. Satyanarayana, is expected to release later this year. The director has also signed a film with Jayam Ravi, the details of which he couldn’t reveal.