“Bigil is an opportunity for our brand and as a production house it is very exciting to do produce the film that has such a big star in actor Vijay,” says Archana Kalpathi, who is the creative producer of Bigil, which is up for release this Deepavali. Directed by Atlee, the movie stars Vijay and Nayanthara as leads and produced by AGS Entertainment.
In an exclusive interview, Archana speaks about the film and her experience of working in it.
Excerpts from the interview…
Q: On your role as creative producer.
A: I was very excited because it was a great learning opportunity. For anyone to grow, you have to keep learning and keep expanding the knowledge base and I thought this is a tremendous opportunity for me to do that.
Q: What is Bigil all about and what kind of impact will it create?
A: Bigil though being a sports film, it is all about women empowerment. This movie will create a positive impact especially among women we are also hoping that it would change men in a particular way.
Q: How did AGS Entertainment decide to produce Bigil?
A: The decision to produce a film will always be taken by my father. But, I watch every movie that releases and I track them quite seriously. So, I have a database of all the movies, what works and what not works. Movies follow a certain trend and pattern so I just give my inputs more in terms of trying to understand where the market is right now.
Q: You spoke about movie trends and do you think sports films are in vogue right now and is that why AGS decided to produce Bigil?
A: Sports films are universal and it always works. Even in the past movies that have sports as the main theme like Badri, Gilli, Ethir Neechal, Irudhi Suttru have done well. Sports movies are always about victory and how protagonists overcome obstacles to achieve that so it has always been well received.
Q: With Bigil, you have become the face of AGS, especially in social media with fans wanting to know about the film through your tweets. So, what do you feel about it?
A: I understand that the fans do it because of the affection they show towards their favourite star. I understand their concerns about the film and it gives us much more responsibility to give our heart and soul in bringing out a super hit film and we are focussing on it.
Q: There were many rumours during the making of the film. How did you react to it?
A: You don’t know where these rumours come from but we didn’t have time to react. We worked for 20 hours a day. Once a day’s shoot gets over the next day’s schedule sheet comes and we started working on it so there was hardly any time. We also did not want any discord in the set so we refused to listen to the rumours.