Exclusive | Pushkar and Gayatri on Their Next Film: 'An Ambitious Project In Multiple Parts'

Pushkar and Gayatri want to bring the Gen Z and the Gen Alpha back to the theatres. The director duo might be delicately enriching Tamil streaming through their production house, Wallwatcher Films (their credits include Prime Video's Suzhal, Exam, and Vadhandhi), but they also want to make films that will bring people to theatres. "You have all kinds of stories; the thing is where you want to tell it. We want to tell stories everywhere," say Pushkar and Gayatri.

Ahead of Vadhandhi 2, the director duo speaks to The Hollywood Reporter India about why they keep returning to thrillers, and mounting a massive film. Excerpts from an interview:

You're increasingly drawn to socially relevant themes in work you produce and write. How much of the world informs what you want to create and produce?

I think the politics around us influence what we write. Tamil cinema has always been associated with the "message film". We don't want to be what's called the porali, fighting in our cinema. But I think it is also about representing these problems rather than taking a very strong message forward. We don't come with a mindset of trying to solve these problems from a global level. And if you take, say, a Shankar sir film or an AR Murugadoss film, they are very, very socially conscious films.

But they approach problems from a large scale, like global corruption in the state and stuff like that. We are talking about, I think, much smaller problems than that, than that overall view.

This must require a lot of alignment between you and the creators you work with, right?

Somewhere, we are also trying to create an identity of what are the kind of stories Wallwatcher Films will want to tell. And in that, the creator, the director, the writer, and the team need to have a voice. And that voice kind of needs to also fit in with our larger worldview. So I don't know if we will ever do one tender love story, one that kind of thing. I don't know. We won't even say, what is the conflict here? We will still get baffled.

Do you both enjoy watching romances? 

One of our favourite films is Little Miss Sunshine. It's a tender film. So it's not like we don't like those films. But we still can't watch, like, a two-and-a-half-hour-long love story. That pining is something we can't wrap our heads around.

Actually, we progressed a little bit in life. We sat and watched the series called Off Campus. So for the first few episodes, we were slightly rolling our eyes and looking at each other, going 'What have we become?' and 'Why are we watching this teenage love story kind of thing?' Then from the third episode onwards, it started working for us. We were invested. I don't think we should be telling you this. (laughs). Thrillers and mysteries are easy watches. Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, the Harlan Coben stories, Mare of Easttown and a lot of horror are a few things we enjoy watching.

How exciting has the producing space been for you compared to directing?

When we started in films, there was always this routine where you need to write the story, you go pitch it to a producer and then get it done. Then eventually, we came to a point where we could do that, where we could take stories forward. So it felt necessary that with that little bit of reach we have, to push our foot through certain doors, which a lot of others will not be able to.

Using that just for our own benefit will mean that we do just one film every seven to eight years, kind of thing. But another option is to use that reach to tell other stories. When it comes to the conversation between direction and production, the more efficient it is, the less wastage there will be. We're proud of the team we've built at Wallwatchers, where we spent a lot of time training the system to function well. It's a young, passionate team.

Given the independent filmmaking background that we come from, I think the natural progression was, "hey, now we need to take on another mantle." These are not in contradiction to each other.

Can you tell us anything about your next feature film?

We have finished writing and it’s an ambitious project. We can’t give you any details but it is a large project. It is going to be in multiple parts. The mounting of it requires a lot of effort in terms of the cast and the money associated. We are hoping that we will go on floors by the end of this year. There’s also a lot of VFX involved.

We want to get the younger generation coming into theatres. Up to a certain point, there was a steady movie watching habit, where we’d watch a film during the weekends. The habit is slowly going away. We are optimistic that the community viewing experience isn't going anywhere.

We’re hoping that big scale films will attract people to the theatres. Why did The Odyssey open so big? We want the Gen Z and Gen Alpha kids to come and watch the film in the theatres.