‘Prabhas is very dedicated’
Filmmaker Om Raut speaks to us about his professional bond with the actor and how he is eyeing the Telugu market too with his film Adipurush
It came as a surprise to many when Prabhas agreed to work with Om Raut for Adipurush, his upcoming Telugu film based on the Hindu mythological epic Ramayana. The film is mounted on a huge scale for a pan-India audience.
But Prabhas may have had no doubts about the filmmaker’s skills after watching his earlier works in English during his MTV stint and, later, while making the mammoth Marathi film Lokmanya: Ek Yugpurush (2015) on the life of freedom fighter Balgangadhar Tilak and then Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior (2020), which was also the biggest hit of 2020. “I watched Steven Spielberg’s Jurrasic Park and when I saw how he’d made the film with superb special effects and created the dinosaurs, I realised that films were made on the table,” says Raut, who began his career doing a radio play when he was in 4th standard. “That was the very reason I wanted to be a filmmaker. I went ahead and studied electronic engineering and then chose to pursue my masters in Cinema at the Syracuse University in New
York.”
A WORKING BOND
The filmmaker’s bonding with Prabhas during the making of the film was palpable — the actor had even invited the filmmaker to Hyderabad for the trailer launch of his film Radhe Shyam.
“We’ve developed a lot of trust in each other. He’s one of the best human beings I know and we’re very comfortable working with each other. We were not really coming into work every day, but we came in everyday to have fun. The level of dedication Prabhas has put into the film will take it to another level and that was the reason we both became
very close,” Raut said.
EYEING THE TELUGU MARKETS
The filmmaker, who’s won several awards for his Marathi and Hindi debut films, hopes to make an impact with his Telugu film too. “Cinema is not about the language; it’s about reaching as many people as you can, which is what I hope to achieve through Adipurush. I hope to do more films in Hyderabad, and thankfully because of Prabhas many more people in the Telugu industry know me now,” add Raut.