Realized Sudeep's potential after Eega: RGV

After his tryst with Veerappan’s life in his current film, Killing Veerappan, filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma is set to work on his next. This time, he has chosen the life of reformed don Muthappa Rai, which will have Sudeep in the lead. The film, titled Apparai, will be made in Kannada and Hindi.
Explaining his choice of subject, RGV says, “I had heard of Muthappa in Mumbai, when I was doing research for Satya and Company, and what I heard intrigued me.His story, as it happened, as reported and as told by a number of sources, is most fascinating. His journey from Mangaluru to Bengaluru to Mumbai, to Dubai and Muscat, and then back, is like folklore. Apart from the story itself, I was equally fascinated by the man, his way of looking at things, his attitude towards the world and the way he carved out his life.”
Speaking about the former don’s involvement in the film, he says, “If I am making a film on someone, of course, I will have to meet that person to know and experience him first-hand. But Muthappa has nothing to do with the film in any capacity. Also, his story has not come from him alone. He is just one of the multiple sources that I gathered information from, which include cops, crime reporters and some sources I have in Mumbai. I want to tell an unbiased story about what made someone like Muthappa Rai possible.”
The filmmaker adds that Sudeep was in his mind for the protagonist’s role as soon as he began planning this project. “I liked Sudeep as an actor even when I did Phoonk and Rann with him, but only after Eega did I realize his actual potential. Many take his acting in that film for granted, with respect to his expressions when interacting with the fly, but as a director, I know how difficult it is to act when you are imagining the fly to be there,” he says.
As for making the film in Hindi as well, RGV says, “The story deals with a man who started from the Bengaluru underworld, went to Mumbai and Dubai, hobnobbed with the D Company and then started his own company in Muscat.”