'Maanja was initially scripted for Yash'
BENGALURU: Dr Suri, who marked his debut with Yash and Ramya-starrer Lucky, is gearing up to helm his second project, Maanja. The muhurath took place on Vijaydashmi with Yash giving the first clap. The dentist-turned-director has roped in Anish Tejeshwar and Deepa Sannidhi as the lead and is now getting ready with a teaser which he plans to shoot in the next couple of days. According to Dr Suri, Maanja is a colloquial word in Kannada, which means ‘Sweet Revenge’ and it was Yash who recommened Anish. “Yash felt that Anish has a lot of potential and I should do this film with him. The film features Deepa as a next-door-girl character,” shares Suri.
Stressing that the film will be a commercial entertainer, he reveals that it will feature Chikkanna, Sadhu Kokila, Ravi Shankar, Rangayana Raghu and Kaddipudi Chandru. “Arun Sagar might also join us and thus it will become a huge entertaining cast,” he says and adds that the reason for taking a long gap after Lucky was not intentional and points it to destiny.
“I had this script created for Yash and it was a story written by me before Lucky. I was supposed to debut with Maanja, but the budget was high and so I decided to go with Lucky. Later, though I had Yash’s dates, he had good line of projects like Googly, Raja Hulli, Drama, Gajakesari, Mr and Mrs Ramachari coming his way, and each time he got a film in hand, I let go with my dates and told him to take up those projects because all had good stories suited for the actor. Today, I can’t make this movie for Yash because his stardom is gone beyond the script now. If at all I wish to do this movie with him, I will have to alter a lot of things. But with Anish, I can do it as it is. Yash has always told that ‘he missed doing the film’,” he explains. Maanja will now go on floors from November.