Vijay Deverakonda Says 'Kingdom' Isn't a Desperate Choice To Star in a Big-Scale Pan-Indian Film: 'Not Doing It Due To Market Forces'

Vijay Deverakonda hasn't had the brightest post-pandemic years at the box-office. After a series of underperforming movies, including The Family Star (2024), Kushi (2023), and Karan Johar co-produced Liger (2022), the actor hopes to come back with Kingdom. But Deverakonda insists that his decision to star in the upcoming spy-action thriller wasn't driven by a preference for "scale" over compelling storytelling.

"If I were to choose Kingdom because of market forces and trends, you wouldn't have seen 40 soldiers in the teaser. If I had to do it for scale, I would have had 200 soldiers and a thousand guns. But we're not doing that," Deverakonda tells THR India in an exclusive interview.

The upcoming feature, produced by Naga Vamsi and Sai Soujanya and also starring Satyadev and Bhagyashri Borse, marks Deverakonda's first collaboration with filmmaker Gowtam Tinnanuri, who has helmed the Hindi and Telugu versions of Jersey. Ahead of Kingdom's July 31 release, Deverakonda talks about choices, career and trends.

Edited excerpts:

What are the scripts you turn down today?

Everyone comes to you with a certain scale today. I mostly say no because it doesn't hook me or engage me. Every film has a lot of work going into it. From inception to release, it's one whole journey where a film changes a lot. So sometimes I say no if I feel like this journey is too far of a stretch to make it work.

Sometimes I also say no because I feel like maybe the director and I won't be on the same page. Cinema is a director's medium, we all serve as tools to purpose his vision and to bring it to the audience. So if I feel like I won't be a tool he can use well and we won't function well, then I shouldn't do it. Also, if I don't fully feel like this is the film I'd watch, then I won't sign it.

What kind of films do you like to watch?

I love drama! Drama mixed with action, drama mixed with comedy or comedy action, these are my favourite genres. Romance is something that I really like as well.

Since you mentioned that today a lot of filmmakers are coming with films of huge scale, is that something you are looking at as well? It's also mostly what the industry says is the audience's demand post-pandemic.

Scale is always exciting; who doesn't like a big house, a big car, a big film? It's in our nature to love scale, to love the Taj Mahal, to admire a skyscraper... we all want to reach beyond our limits. I know that whether I'm at the theatre or on a flight and need to choose a film, I tend to gravitate towards one that excites me on a scale level. Of course, all of us loved Game of Thrones, because there's crazy drama in it, but on a huge canvas.

It is all about how you want to convey a message. A 12th Fail, which I absolutely loved and was inspired by, didn't have "scale," but it had big heart in its storytelling. Similarly, when you make a Chhaava, which is a representation of history, then you will tell it a particular way to bring it as close as possible to our imagination of what history was at that time.

With regards to Kingdom, when the teaser had dropped, a section in the trade felt that you were embracing the big pan-India scaled-up films after some of the mid-size films didn't do well. Is that a correct reading?

The idea is to always go big, but this is not because something didn't work or worked. Kingdom happened because Gowtam had a vision, and we wanted to tell this in the most compelling, exciting, realistic, and believable way. It's a story set in a certain time amidst the background of war. But it's also a personal story, in the backdrop of chaos and destruction. That brings the scale in itself. There's no scale for the sake of it because of market forces; it is inherent.

So you mean to say you didn't engineer the scale....

Exactly. If I had to do it for market forces, I would have actually done it on a much, much bigger scale but we felt like it has to be realistic. In the teaser, we have 40 soldiers, but if I had to do it for scale, I would have had 200 soldiers and a thousand guns. But we're not doing that. We're doing it like how a real checkpoint in the 1990s Sri Lanka would have been. The idea is to make it real and make it an entertaining, good watch.