Producer Uday K Mehta and three-time state award-winning director, B M Giriraj, are coming together for an natural-horror thriller featuring a tiger — Avani, maneater returns — as the face of this film. This will be a multi-starrer by Uday, for which he is planning to bring together biggies from the south Indian industry, who will be playing pivotal roles.
Interestingly, the producer, who turned writer with Brahmachari, has come up with another storyline, which completely revolves around the tiger. Uday has taken reference from a real-life incident, for which he has added a fictional fantasy dimension. The screenplay and direction will be done by Giriraj.
“I wanted to associate with director Giriraj since the time he worked as an associate co-director in Krishnan Love Story, which was produced by me. I am glad to be teaming up with him for this project, which is the first-of-a kind attempt in south Indian cinema. Creating a tiger through computer graphics will be a costly affair. For the content which is universal, the director has come out with the beautiful screenplay for my storyline. The film is vast and can be adapted to any region or language,” says Uday, who plans to give this film a pan-India appeal. According to the producer, the project is vast and requires a lot preparation time.
He is working towards going on floors in 2021. Uday’s current commitment is with Dhruva Sarja, directed by Nanda Kishore, a project they plan to take off once the actor-director is done with Pogaru. Meanwhile, Giriraj too has committed to a film starring Ravichandran.
“My visualisation of Avani is on the lines of films like Jaws and Anaconda,” Giriraj who is looking forward to teaming up with Uday. According to him, Uday, as a producer, has a ‘good hold on cinema’ and has come with a unique storyline.
“We have finally locked the third version of the screenplay. This is a genre that I will be helming for the first time. It’s going to be an ‘natural-horror’ thriller, and I visualise something on the lines of Hollywood films Jaws and Anaconda,” says the director.
He goes on to add that a lot of challenges lie ahead for Avani, which require work on computer graphics and live locations. The dialogues for Avani are written by Raghu Niduvalli, who has previously worked in Bell Bottom.
“Technically, we are planning to bring on board cameraman Panneerselvam, who has previously worked in Charulatha. We are yet to finalise the music director,” he says.