All is not well between Gautham Menon and young filmmaker Karthick Naren, who rose to fame with his very first film Dhuruvangal 16. Karthick is apparently stuck with his second film Naragasooran due to a financial crunch and Gautham Menon is the producer of the film.
Karthick feels he has been left in the lurch for no fault of his and started an open war of words on his social media handle, to which Gautham responded in a caustic manner.
The 21-year-old Karthick Naren’s debut thriller D16 was critically acclaimed, besides garnering several awards while also being a huge box-office hit. His background makes it all the more interesting as Karthick quit engineering to pursue his passion for filmmaking although he had never worked as an assistant to any K’town director before making his first film.
Naragasooran, which he calls as the second flick in the D16 trilogy, features Arvind Swami, Shriya Saran, Indrajith and Sandeep Kishan in the lead. Most of the shooting was done in Ooty, Karthick’s native place.
The war of words started when Naren posted a tweet on his handle saying, “Sometimes a misplaced trust may kill you. People should think twice before taking it for a ride. The last thing you want to see is your passion getting butchered from all the directions for a mistake you did not commit. Threshold!”
Though Karthick did not mention Menon’s name initially, many speculated the tweet was addressed to Gautham.
On Tuesday, however, things became obvious that the fight was indeed between Naren and Gautham when the latter posted a video and commented as follows - “While some young filmmakers whine about their passion getting butchered instead of growing a pair, here’s a young team that makes an interesting short about girls, women, cricket, CSK and liberation. What a connect!! Very nicely done!”
An irked Karthick hit out boldly saying, “While everybody advised against it I had the pair to trust you & collaborate sir. In return we were treated like trash & made to invest on our own. I think it’s better to whine & confront instead of running away. Please don’t do this to any other young filmmaker sir. It hurts!”
We tried to contact Karthick and Gautham many times for their comments, but both were unavailable. Our sources do say that Karthick went ahead and signed with Gautham despite many dissuading him from doing so as the Vinnai Thaandi Varuvaaya director is constantly in dire straits financially. Also, it is learnt that he has only lent his banner for production and has not invested any money for the project.
Reports also suggest that Gautham borrowed money pledging Naragasooran and invested it in his own movies Dhuruva Natchathiram with Vikram and Ennai Nokki Paayum Thotta with Dhanush, which have been in the making for a very long time. Also, he has not settled the salaries of some of the lead actors of Naragasooran.
Karthick claims all efforts to reach across to Gautham went in vain. And hence he burst out! Meanwhile, he has announced the third in trilogy titled Naadaga Medai, which he told us is based on his own life experiences.
This is not the first time Gautham has been dragged into controversy. Earlier, producer Elred Kumar of RS Infotainment filed a case against Gautham Menon over a money dispute contending the latter had to pay Rs 20 crores for the losses he incurred.
