One can gauge the excitement in Niranjan’s voice and why not. The response to the last week’s release Garuda Vega has been euphoric, people have owned the film and have being telling their near and dear ones to watch it. The social media has been promoting the film as well. The team couldn’t have asked for more. Ask writer Niranjan why there were so few shows on the opening day, was the strategy to create a hype? “No! We genuinely didn’t have the resources then. The response after release has been tremendous; I am told that tickets are being sold in black. We need extra shows, we are struggling to get those extra shows.,” he says.
Niranjan Ramireddy came to the industry as a writer five years ago and worked in a couple of inconspicuous films but he wasn’t happy with that regular formula stuff. In search of directors who make sensible movies, he worked as a co-writer for Praveen Sattaru’s Chandamama Kathalu. Now, with Garuda Vega, the result is there for all to see.
Director Praveen is always shifting genres and does stories that primarily excite him. Post Guntur Talkies he was interested in an action thriller and with Rajashekar’s entry, the project got bigger. Niranjan observes, “Writing is comparatively easier than directing but we did have our sleepless nights, bouncing off ideas. There was no factual material with us and even to go fictional, we needed a factual background. We can’t create something out of thin air. So we researched on how NIA works, we studied scams and what kind of witness protection the country offers, how the case builds up while you write became thoroughly interesting. Around that time when we were scripting, around 30 terrorists were nabbed in the Old City by the NIA in a surprise move. We couldn’t have gone to the ground level to interact with them and know about the planning but we worked at our imagination.”
Praveen had thought about a decoding sequence subject in the interval sequence. He wrote it ten years ago but after Rajashekar came in, he decided to go with it on a big scale.
Did they ever imagine that B and C segment audience too would accept this film? Niranjan says they did have their doubts while writing, but Praveen’s answer was that just as we have the B and C audience for our vernacular films, there is similar crowd for films like Star Wars or Star Trek. It is impossible to satisfy all people with one particular type of story. There will be people who’ll try to follow the technically logical side and others, who simply follow the story.”
Niranjan recollects asking the director if he needed to keep Rajashekar in mind while writing and was told to just go ahead and not set any boundaries. He was told to remember Shekar, the character and not Rajashekar the hero. Shekar can be any actor, if not Rajashekar then someone else but Shekar would be a constant factor in the script.
Finally, does the character Shekar have cancer? Maybe he doesn’t. The writer reveals the dialogue has been used as a multiple thread, to create a humorous touch and to create anxiety in the audience. The audience too should get worried but the main point is we wanted to show that despite being told he has cancer, Shekar goes about his work with the same amount of sincerity and does what he pleases. Nothing can stop him.”