Not the scale but the script matters the most: Manu Anand

CHENNAI: The teaser of Mr X released a few months ago and had rave responses from the audience for its making. Director Manu Anand, who proved his mettle with his first film FIR is now gearing up for the release of his second movie that features Arya, Gautham Ram Karthik, Sarathkumar, Manju Warrier and Kaali Venkat, among others. “Mr X is a spy thriller. 99 per cent of the characters you would see in the film are spies and there is an important character that is not a spy,” he starts by giving us a suspense.

But of course, we would want him to divulge something for our readers and ask him if the movie would follow the pattern in which the teaser was cut because the suspense builds as the teaser heads towards its 120th second. Here, Manu turns to a reader’s delight and agrees, “Pretty much. But of course there is a lot that will unravel as the movie progresses. And there will be easter eggs here and there in the story for the audience to travel along with the characters and keep them intrigued,” he adds.

The film’s aesthetics is already being appreciated within and away from the industry, as it has been quite some time since Tamil audiences have watched a slick and stylish film. “That was the first thing we discussed. Lakshman sir of Prince Pictures told me if we plan on making a film, we will be making something on a large scale and certainly not a movie for the sake of doing it. I hadn’t planned Mr X as my sophomore project because of its scale,” says Manu.

He then elaborates on how Mr X eventually happened the minute he met Arya to narrate. “I wanted to narrate ‘a script’ to Arya and when I started narrating, it was Mr X’s line that came to my mind. 15 minutes into narration, Arya got the gist of the story and agreed to do it. Trust me, I am a better writer than an orator. So it was the story that should have impressed him and not my narrative skills,” the director quips.

Arya’s preparation in a way set the tone for the project as he built a muscular frame and netizens were floored yet again with his transformation. “It is a spy thriller. I am not comparing it with a film like Mission Impossible. But people do believe when Tom Cruise performs stunts at 61 because he makes it look believable. I wanted my actors to look their part and when they do something larger-than-life, the audience should believe it. While I wanted Arya to be built in a muscular frame, I wanted Gautham Ram Karthik to be diametrically opposite. I wanted him to have a lean mass physique. Gautham dedicated himself to building that frame. Be it Arya or Gautham or Manju or Sarathkumar, they will convince the audience,” he remarks.

As we are intrigued, we ask him more about the story. Manu is more than happy to share the crux of it with us and says, “The story will be relevant to what has happened in India lately. I am a huge fan of espionage films and highly interested in geopolitical affairs. I had to do some research around India’s first nuclear device that was launched in the 1960s. The idea originated from that incident and how this team sets out to locate it. As the research got intense, there were few other incidents that have happened across the years up until 2022. So, I have woven that into the storyline. The end credits of Mr X will have clips of real incidents to it.”

Now that he has attached himself to a film of a big scale, Manu is aware of what he should be doing next. “And that is to not get into the trap of being a big-budgeted filmmaker. To be honest, I had a small, medium and a big budget script ready. But Mr X took off. It is not that my next film should be bigger than this. There are no such fixed norms. Be it a Rs 20-crore film or a Rs 200-crore film, the audience will like it only if a good content is attached to it,” he signs off by saying that the team will announce its release plans soon.