Buzz: Another Fight Master Turns Director

While dance choreographers regularly end up directing movies, there are times when action choreographers also take on the megaphone. While the likes of Farah Khan, Prabhudeva, Remo D’souza, and recently Vijay Binni have all come from dance choreography to directing, now noted Telugu stunt choreographer Venkat is getting ready to call the shots.

Reports are coming that noted Telugu fight master Venkat has narrated a story to hero Gopichand, whose career is going through a purple patch at the moment. Impressed by Venkat’s narration and also liking his way of action-design in the story, Gopichand is said to have given the nod. The film most likely gets bankrolled by the production house 70MM Cinema, and is likely to go on floors from the coming June.

In fact, Tollywood’s fight masters never achieved big as directors, though choreographers like Amma Rajasekhar and Prabhudeva clicked for a while. If we look at world cinema, however, particularly in Hong Kong cinema, we have Yuen Woo-ping of Matrix fame, and then in Hollywood, we have Chad Stahelski, who directed the John Wick movies. In Tollywood, we have Ram-Lakshman doing a directorial long back, but that didn’t work. We have to see if Venkat’s film with Gopichand will be the action-dose that Tollywood has never seen, or how it shapes up.