Directors, Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK, talk about fun of breaking barriers and mixing genres. Their next is a zombie comedy Go Goa Gone
When they came up with their first Hindi movie, 99, they were asked why a crime-comic-thriller with an element of historical fiction. When their Shor In The City released, they were again in news for their unique concept and edgy portrayal of Mumbai. And now when their latest, Go Goa Gone, is all set to release, Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK (Raj & DK) are being talked about for coming up with a zom-com (zombie comedy). “I think we have always loved the idea of mixing the genres. It is fun to do things differently and present the film in a way that no body can even think of. We didn’t want to do a zombie film in a pure horror, drama or a thriller format, since that would have been very obvious. We wanted to present something exciting and we always looked at the story of Go Goa Gone with lots of humour and that’s why we made it that way,” said the director duo, who got a call from Saif Ali Khan to discuss the films, “he asked us if we had some other ideas and we told him that we were thinking of a zombie comedy. He was immediately interested and we got a producer and an actor who thoroughly understood the script and helped us what we wanted to do.”
This year, it seems that the fans of zombie films will have a ball. After Rise of the Zombies, Go Goa Gone will be the next. Raj and Krishna say that Indian audience today are open to change and new concepts and more than genres, it is the script and the story that matters them the most. “If the film is served as a right package and has every ingredient to keep the audience interested, I don’t see any reason for the film to not work on the box office. There has been a lot of change in the industry in the last five years and people are open to more innovative ideas and subjects. We have always worked on out-of-the-box subjects and have been appreciated for our work. It is only because today there is a scope for innovations. People are used to watching world cinema and they know what is good and bad. Anything that is packaged well would be appreciated,” said Raj and about the casting of the film, he added, “Kunal Khemu and Saif Ali Khan has been the part of the script since beginning and Vir Das was roped in later and the team rocks.”
The engineers-turned-filmmakers have made films that have earned much acclaim at prestigious film festivals around the world and garnered a lot of critical acclaim. Filmmaking happened to them by chance. “We were working in US and didn’t give us that creative satisfaction that we were looking at. We got together and started making short films and it was through shorts that we got to know the nuances of filmmaking. We did an hour-long feature, shaadi.com. And through that film we traveled to prestigious film festivals and were exposed to the world cinema. It encouraged us to make our first feature film, FlAVORS. So when we came to Mumbai we had some scripts in our hand and they were not the regular stuff. It is difficult to make an entry in Bollywood without connections, but we had interesting ideas and scripts that helped us sail through. If we would have tried making an entry 15 years ago, it would have been difficult for us, as that was not the time for our kind of ideas, but today is the better time to experiment in Bollywood,” said Raj.
The duo has always worked as a team, with their creative partner Sita Menon and has written their scripts themselves. “We think like team and since we have been together since long, we went to school together, started work together and we make films together, we understand and respect each other’s individual skills and ideas. There are minor disagreements sometimes, that are bound to happen when you work as a team, but they are resolved amicably,” ended Raj.