Fondly known as ‘Bunny’, ‘Stylish Star’, and now the ‘Icon Star’, Allu Arjun is one of the biggest stars in Indian cinema. The trailer of Pushpa: The Rise Part 1, was released earlier this month, and going by the visuals, the film promises an exciting action-thriller. It also marks the actor’s first pan-India release. The film is set in the backdrop of red sandalwood and how cargo worth billions get smuggled overseas from Seshachalam forests in Andhra Pradesh.
One of the biggest and most anticipated releases of Arjun’s career, the film, which releases on December 17, faces a stiff competition as Hollywood superhero film Spider-Man: No Way Home which released today has already a got a huge advance booking. Talking about the competition, the actor said that for him, it was more important to bring the audience back to cinemas.
“Due to the pandemic the culture of watching films in theatres has receded. I am not just looking my own film Pushpa. I believe that Spider-Man should get the audience back to theatres and similarly our film should aim at getting back the fans back to theatres. It is all about celebrating cinemas. Cinema should win and not just Indian cinema but world cinema overall. Next week we have Ranveer Singh and director Kabir Khan’s film 83 releasing, and I wish them all the luck and hope they too get the audiences back. I would also like to take the opportunity and congratulate the team of Sooryavanshi for instilling faith in the audience,” he said.
While Pushpa: The Rise Part 1 launches the on a pan-India level, Arjun expressed that grateful as he is for being able to make a mark in the Telugu industry, he is itching to widen his horizon and do a pure Hindi film. “I love Hindi cinema. I have grown up watching it. I definitely want to do a straight Hindi film. It will be a landmark point in my career and I want to make the best possible choice for it. There have been a few offers but nothing really interesting or exciting has come up. Also, people who come to me, they say they have to come with something solid. Once everything falls into place, I’ll try to plan and come up with something big,” he said.
Talking about Hindi films, the actor says that one of his biggest inspirations has been superstar Amitabh Bachchan. “I think I am most inspired by megastar Amitabh Bachchan. I absolutely adore his filmography through such a long span of his career. I have grown up watching his films, he’d had an immense impact on me, in my growing up years. Even at his age today he is acting in such fantastic films, he motivates through his work.”
Pushpa was earlier supposed to be in one part, but later they decided to make it into two parts. Arjun says it was the material that they had in hand which called for the film to be divided in two parts. “When director Sukumar narrated the script it was a four hour film. So I asked him how would we make it into a three hour film, and he said we will compress it somehow. But when we got on to shooting, it became even more decompressed. That’s when we realised that the film cannot be made in one part alone,” he explained without revealing anything about the second part. “It won’t be fun to talk about it right now. Let the first part release and allow the audience to see and understand the end after which we will talk about the second part.”
The film was shot during the pandemic, which according to the South star, was a huge challenge. “This was one the most difficult films to shoot. We were shooting in a forest with around 500 people. The logistics including providing food, accommodation and keeping the sanitisations and following all protocols was really difficult. I have always maintained that shooting for this film was equivalent to shooting for four films,” he said.
