You’ve created quite a buzz with the title Masss. Do you still feel titles play a role in creating maximum pre-release buzz?
Absolutely! Title is very important for a film to even make audiences to take notice of it. A striking poster doesn’t alone make heads turn; it also needs to be accompanied by an interesting title. When it comes to star vehicle like Masss or even any film starring Ajith or Vijay, title is the first reason for fans to celebrate a movie’s arrival.
The title is sure catchy but feels intentional (aimed at the masses) at the same time…
Everything you do in cinema is intentional. To keep the buzz around a film alive from its inception till theatrical release, you’ve got to do something creative. With a star like Suriya and title like Masss, you can be sure of bringing the crowd into cinemas. But it may not work all the time. For instance, the title of my last film, Biriyani, too, created quite a buzz but the movie didn’t click. However, I’m lucky that it has worked most of the times
All your films have had very catchy and easy-to-remember titles. What’s the process of selecting the title for your movies?
I don’t have any process per se to select titles. I believe in keeping everything simple. As I start working on a script, I usually stumble upon an interesting title. But I look for recall factor in any title that I choose for my films. Ten years later, if we look back at a film, one should remember it by its title because not everybody can remember the story. All my films’ titles have had great recall factor and luckily, people still remember them by their titles.
You started you career with low-budget, independent films. How’s been the experience of jumping from making small films to star-centric projects?
There’s lot of responsibility while working with a star. There’s also some degree of fear because expectations are very high. Star-centric project means high budget and the star’s image will ride on my shoulders. So I have to ensure their image doesn’t get tampered because of a bad film. Initially, when I made films with my boys, only my reputation was at stake. If a smaller film doesn’t do well, it’ll only affect me and I usually take it in my stride. In the case of my movie Goa, its failure mostly affected me and I took full responsibility of it.
Managing the growing expectations of the audience must be a challenge..
I don’t plan to manage expectations. I don’t sit and chalk out a road map before I start working on a project. For the audio launch of Masss, we decided a day before its release that we won’t have a regular event and would release each track across different radio stations during the course of the day. For Biriyani, we had planned a grand audio launch as it was Yuvan Shankar Raja’s 100th film. But everything went kaput when the music got leaked a few days prior to the official release. We couldn’t do anything about it. So I believe in momentary decisions than long-term planning. I really don’t think you can take control of a situation well in advance.
Masss is being promoted as a horror-comedy. Are you cashing in on the current trend of successful films in this genre?
When I started writing the script, which was in last January, hardly any horror-comedies had released. It was only a few months later, a slew of films in this genre started coming out. Masss isn’t actually a horror-comedy because typically in such films the laughs are generated out of slapstick humor involving the comedians. We haven’t followed such a pattern. I believe we’ve worked on something fresh and hope audiences will like it. We included a shot of Suriya as a vampire in the film’s teaser to create some curiosity because now people have started to wonder what genre the film really belongs to.
Suriya recently said at an event that Masss was originally written as a simple love story…
I usually work on a story idea with my boys – Shiva, Vaibhav, Premgi and co in mind. Later, it gets developed into something else when a star joins the project. Mankatha, for instance, is a good example. In fact, Biriyani is one such project where I had to change a lot when Karthi came on board. It was originally written as a political film. But since Karthi’s previous film Saguni also had political undertone, I had to completely change the story. Maybe that’s why it didn’t work the way I had originally anticipated. When I first narrated this story to Suriya, I didn’t have him in my mind. I just narrated a sequence and that got it him excited as he hasn’t done such kind of film before. As we started discussing further, the expectation factor audiences have about Suriya kicked in. When this project was announced, people started comparing it with Mankatha and that automatically made me nervous. Since Suriya and I were teaming up for the first time, I wanted to do justice to our combination and create an impact. Hence, we had to change a lot of things in the script. If we team up again, I don’t have to worry about certain things as much as I had to this time.
You’ve worked with Ajith, Karthi and now Suriya. Do producers still come to you with the request to make films with stars?
All the time. Post Mankatha, all the projects that were offered to me were requested to be only made with a certain star. Of course, all the producers give me creative freedom, but I don’t think if they’d want me to do something along the lines of Chennai 600028. Most producers come to me with an offer to make a film with Ajith or Vijay. It’s not that I don’t want to work with stars. I’d love to work with Vijay soon.
Do you see this as a blessing or curse?
I’m not quite sure how to view this. It’s definitely a big burden to shoulder because as I said before, there’s lot of responsibility and expectations when you work with a star. On the flip side, you’re paid more on such projects. I wouldn’t get as much as I’m paid now when I work with a smaller team because when no star is involved, the market value of a project comes down. If I make a small film, I can only make it on a tighter budget and can bring audiences solely based on the credibility I’ve built with my work. When I work with a star, the budget becomes bigger and this allows me to achieve what I had planned initially. Had I made Masss with my regular team, I’m sure it wouldn’t have been as big as it is now in terms of production value, budget and even cast. I think I’d look at it as a blessing in disguise. Having said that, I’d love to produce smaller films but I don’t know when that will happen.
Did the failure of Suriya’s Anjaan and your last outing Biriyani cross your mind while working on Mass?
You shouldn’t let the past affect your future. The result of our last films didn’t bother us because we never even thought about it. Had we thought about it, we wouldn’t have completed Masss smoothly. It would’ve definitely affected the output.
Suriya is a very committed actor. Does that make working with him easy or challenging?
The reason the film has come out well is because of the extra push from Suriya. He doesn’t settle for mediocrity and pushes himself and people around him to do much better. He certainly pushed me towards excellence. To answer the question, it does feel quite challenging but it’s worth it.
You had recently said there’s lot of VFX in the movie. But Indian audiences don’t have a healthy opinion about VFX in our films…
We haven’t used it extensively. There are quite a few scenes with VFX, but we’ve used it in a way nobody would realize it. We aren’t promising awe-inspiring VFX experience. The whole purpose of using computer graphics in a movie is that audiences shouldn’t know where exactly it has been used. We have a small fantasy element and we’ve done full justice to it with the help of VFX.
Several southern directors have successfully proved themselves in Bollywood. You plan to follow suit?
I’ve had meetings with Saif Ali Khan and John Abraham but nothing has materialized. Mankatha was supposed to be remade and its remake rights are with Studio Green, and they’re planning to make it with a big studio. But I don’t think I’ll be able to direct because I’ve already signed my next project with Escape Artist Pictures.
