Director Gautham VR’s 7 Naatkal is a murder mystery, starring Shakthi P Vasu, Nikesha Patel, Ganesh Venkatraman, Prabhu, Nasser, Rajeev Pillai and MS Bhaskar in important roles. The film is all about finding out the killer, who has committed two murders. Speaking to DC, Gautham reveals that the story was written by his father Vimal (screenwriter and brother of director P Vasu) 10 years back. “When my father wrote this script for Sivaji Productions, it was decided that Prathap Pothen will direct the venture with Kannada star Puneeth Rajkumar as the hero. Later, the film didn’t materialise and we pitched the story to Jayam Ravi. The actor loved the script, but he couldn’t commit to our project as he felt that his film Dhaam Dhoom was similar to it — there are a lot of chase sequences in the venture. Later, when I finished graduation and worked as an associate with Sundar C, I thought of revamping the script and make it my debut film.”
The director quips that the core plot has been retained while the characterisations and screenplay have been modified to suit the current year. “We shot the film in under 50 days in Chennai, Puducherry and Wagamon (a song was shot there). All characters in the film have a backstory and a purpose,” he adds. One of the interesting aspects of the movie was working with Korean imported Siberian Husky named Poong, the director asserts. “The dog plays an important role in the movie and we trained it for two months to understand English. The dog may have committed the crime as well which will be unravelled in the climax of the movie,” he discloses.
