You could be forgiven for thinking that Shortcut Romeo, Rowdy Rathore and The Businessman are nicknames of criminals. These, however, are the titles of movies south Indian directors are directing in Hindi, often with storylines borrowed from their own hits. Movies like Wanted, Ghajini and Bodyguard laid the blueprint for success, causing many a director from the south to mount his very own B-town expedition.
Let’s face it — the southern invasion, as before, seems mighty hopeful of storming and conquering the Bollywood bastion.
Kollywood heavyweights like Murugadoss and Prabhu Deva have now begun to divide their time between Mumbai and Chennai. Others like directors Lingusamy and Prabhu Solomon, both big names in Tamil cinema, will soon be Mumbai-bound.
The diminutive Murugadoss made a big splash in Bollywood with Ghajini. All eyes are on him now as he ropes in Akshay Kumar for an action thriller — supposedly a remake of the Tamil Thupakki, which he is currently filming with actor Vijay. Speaking of Khiladi Kumar, there’s another Kollywood director who is making hay while the sun shines. Prabhu Deva needs no introduction and certainly not after the Hindi blockbuster Wanted, which boosted Salman Khan’s fortunes.
Says the dancing icon, “Akshay Kumar gets back into the action genre after a gap of 7-8 years and his character in the film Rowdy Rathore is tailormade for him.” Prabhu maintains he is quite comfortable working in Hindi cinema and is not bothered about the financial implications of doing a Hindi film. “What matters is success, everything else is immaterial,” he says.
That explains the rush. Prabhu Solomon whose stock rose to great heights after the superhit Myna in Tamil, has already signed up with Fox Star and producer Vipul Shah to remake the film in Hindi. His explanation is simple: “It’s a new platform, an opportunity to reach out to a wider audience and all said Hindi is an Indian language. Besides, cinema has no language.” And then, a note of pride entering his voice, “The best technicians in Bollywood are all from the south.”
There are no doubters here, only believers. Another director, who has the enviable reputation of giving hits (Ji being the only flop), is the stylish filmmaker Lingusamy, with talks being finalised to make his recent hit Vettai into Hindi. UTV and Walt Disney will back him. The director is convinced that Hindi films are going through an ‘action phase’ and as such, the time is right to launch Vettai, an action story involving two brothers, in Hindi. Point out that Bollywood audiences are quite familiar with such stories (Ram Balram, Deewar, Trishul, Vansh to name a few) and he is quick to retort that Vettai’s storyline is unique. And if he thinks that Vettai will hit the jackpot in Hindi too, nobody’s arguing.
Tamil and Telugu film directors have time and again flocked to Bollywood, enjoying both success and failure. However,
Malayalam cinema, which is poles apart from Bollywood in terms of story, treatment and other relevant aspects of filmmaking, has never had any kind of representation here. Until one man changed the script overnight.
Director Siddique is now the hottest property in Bollywood and with good reason. His Bodyguard was a hit in not only in Mollywood and Kollywood but turned out to be the second-highest grossing film of all time in Bollywood, pushing Salman to the top. Says Siddique: “I had no inkling that Bodyguard would do so well and that too in all the versions.”
While already an established filmmaker in Malayalam cinema, what took Siddique so long to come to Bollywood was for want of a good subject. But the moment he had Bodyguard in hand, he knew he could do it in Hindi. With the mercurial Salman Khan giving an ok to the film, the director was gung ho about the project. Culture shocks having been dealt with (Malayalam film viewers demand reality in their films while the Hindi audience watches as if in a dream), the director who thinks humour is his strongpoint, is now working on a new film in Hindi, having signed up with producers Narendra and Shyam Bajaj. “It is a total masala film and the cast should be selected in the next two weeks,” he says.
With the big guns announcing their presence in Bollywood, why should the young Turks be left behind? Hyderabad-based film director Shashi Sudigala has already directed a Hindi film called Cycle Kick and is now all set to make a paranormal, edgy thriller. About the south exodus to Bollywood, he says, “Dabangg is the bread and butter kind of film for south directors and so when that movie turned out to be such a big hit, the directors thought they had a readymade market there.”
Fully aware of the new wave of cinema that is sweeping Bollywood, Shashi takes it in his stride and says, “Renaissance directors are no threat to the makers of commercial movies; both are mutually exclusive. That’s the beauty of the market.”