After the recent successes of Kantara and the KGF franchise, it is indeed true that the Kannada film industry has earned a name for itself among the pan-Indian audience. In line with this recognition, and hope to uphill the trend, is the upcoming Dhruva Sarja-starrer Martin. The teaser for the action-thriller was unveiled at an event in Bengaluru on Thursday.
The film, which will follow the template of pan-Indian release in all the south Indian languages and Hindi, has a story written by the actor and Dhruva’s uncle, Arjun Sarja. It is helmed by AP Arjun who directed Dhruva’s debut film Addhuri.
Speaking at the event, Arjun, who was welcomed with his iconic song Thayin Manikodi from the Tamil film Jaihind, along with cheer from the crowd, credited filmmakers like Mani Ratnam, SS Rajamouli, Rishabh Shetty, and Prashanth Neel, for pioneering the pan-Indian movement. “Martin is perfect teamwork. This is Dhruva’s fifth film and he wanted an out-and-out commercial project. It is hard to write a story for him and I conceived this story exclusively for him. Martin is one of best commercial stories I have written,” Arjun said.
With the teaser portraying Dhruva in a rustic and macho avatar, the young actor admitted in his timid voice that he is still conscious of his uncle’s presence. But quick to collect himself, he addressed the media, “My first three films were romance. With this, I want to try a different genre as an actor. I have not played Martin. My character is called Arjun. So, who is Martin? That is the story.”
Filmmaker Arjun went on share the camaraderie he has beyond the actor-director relationship, with Dhruva. “Once I heard the story, we worked extensively on how to present this film pan-India. So far, all my films have felt like an exam conducted in Karnataka. With Martin being pan-Indian, I feel like it is a national-level exam.”
Re-instilling this, stunt coordinator duo Ram and Laxman went one step ahead in their pan-Indian strategy with their multi-lingual speech. After paying respects to late actors Rajkumar and Puneeth Rajkumar, Laxman said, “We shot the climax for 45 days and the reason why the stunts have come out so good is because of the technical brilliance. When we first came to Chennai, the one person we looked up to was Arjun sir. We could see the same type of fire and style in Dhruva as well which showed a keen interest in performing those stunts once the action is called.”
Martin features two female leads, Vaibhavi Shandilya and Anveshi Jain, who saw the teaser for the first time along with the crowd. “When I watched Pathaan, the feel of it seemed very unreachable. But when I saw the Martin teaser, I had no idea that I was also part of such a big film. This film will indeed be a benchmark across languages,” said a confidant Anveshi. Echoing her, Vaibhavi also expressed her elatedness to be associated with the project. The actor further shared that she plays a brave and patriotic girl in the film.
On the technical side, crew members shared their contributions. Art director Mohan B Kere said that massive sets that could accommodate 4000-5000 prisoners, which is quite a rarity in production design, were built. Editor KM Prakash opined that the Kannada industry’s newfound respect, which came with the success of Kantara and KGF films, will be further cemented with Martin.
The film, backed by Uday Mehta, will hit screens this year.