'Lakshyam' and 'Loukyam'. The two movies need no introduction for those who want to know about the Gopichand-Sriwass combo. The actor-director duo is on a hat-trick with this week's release 'Rama Banam', which will hit the cinemas on May 5. In this interview, director Sriwass talks about the movie and what we can expect from it.
The director attributes the grand nature of the movie to People Media Factory. "TG Vishwa Prasad and Vivek Kuchibotla understood that the story needs grandeur," the filmmaker says.
My original plan was to do an action with Gopichand. It then occurred to me that our two previous movies were loved by the family audience as well as the mass audience. We then wanted to make a well-intentioned subject laced with action and emotions. The sibling sentiment is what we latched on to.
The title of this movie was initially planned to be 'Lakshyam 2' as a working title. But 'Lakshyam' has become old and there was also a danger of 'Lakshyam 2' being thought of as a sequel. We heard that Nandamuri Balakrishna's recommendation was that we should go with 'Rama Banam'. So, we chose the title.
The element of organic food is what the story needed. A conflict has been built around it. During the pandemic, people have become more health-conscious than before. I have wedded this thinking to family emotions.
The family audience would always want to watch a good family movie. It is not true that people want to watch only dark, massy, horror and such movies. The audience want a movie that they can watch with everyone in their family. There has been a void for such family-time movies, which our movie attempts to fill in.
Milking family emotions in a script space is no ordinary thing. I don't consider a family entertainer as a safe genre. You have got foreign material to get inspired while making a thriller, an action movie. You can watch Korean and Hollywood films. But family entertainers are in a unique space. The characters should mirror life.
Kushboo Sundar's character is key to the story. Jagapathi Babu's wife is what she is in the film. She is sober and composed. She looks perfect as the hero's 'vadina'. The scenes between Gopichand and Kushboo are teary.
Like Dasari Narayana Rao, I can write the story myself and also be the director. Also, if someone like K Raghavendra Rao pitches a strong plot, I can convert it into a script. I prefer to pick ready-made stories so that I get to focus on directing.
