Ram Gopal Varma’s Hollywood Film

Veerappan was the most dangerous man that ever lived in the crime history of the whole world because he was neither a terrorist who had a network nor was he a rebel with an organization …He was just a plain criminal and yet he killed 184 people including 96 policemen

1200 Special task force policemen were permanently on a hunt in a jungle of 6000 square kilometres and they braved through dense forests in extreme conditions for nearly 10 years to catch him

Veerappan in a bid to defend himself killed officers, blew up military trucks,beheaded informers and smashed the head of his own daughter because her crying might attract a nearby police team

This film will be about what led to the meteoric rise of Veerappan, the tremendous failure of the system to curb his growth and about a blood curdling strategy which eventually killed him

Zero dark thirty as a film concentrated only on what led to the killing of Osama bin laden because it was taken for granted that the audience in general already know who Bin laden is and what led to 9/11

Likewise when I made “Killing Veerappan” In Kannada I concentrated only on the operation of killing Veerappan because the people of Karnataka know all the other details about Veerappan …But coming to Hindi i was reluctant to release the same version as I felt people need to know and understand the phenomenon of Veerappan before coming to the point of killing him

In spite of it being a massive hit in South I strongly felt that the audience in the north and outside the country would be dissatisfied because unlike in the south they don’t know much about Veerappan …When I told the back story of Veerappan to a businessman from Dubai who saw the Kannada film It blew his mind and he insisted that this film has to be made as a biopic on an international level ..He said it can’t be limited to just the killing of Veerappan ..So he and an international partner of his are producing this biopic of Veerappan and their one and only condition was that I should not compromise on this film’s cost and just push it to the highest of international standards

The International version of Veerappan is going to be completely reshot again with a lot of new actors because it’s now a biopic and the emphasis won’t be just on killing Veerappan …it will catch the tremendous drama of the rise of Veerappan,the dangerously complex situations of how the Special Task force and Border security forces failed,before it unfolds the deadly strategy which led to the killing of Veerappan

In Veerappan’s biopic,there will be visuals of a huge swath of BSF personnel landing in planes and being transported through a convoy of trucks to various points in the jungle

There will also be scenes with heated discussions happening in the assembly and the parliament about the failure to catch Veerappan …there will be aspects of foreign journalists thronging to do research and write books on him and more than anything else there will be an extremely rich atmospheric detailing which is usually seen only in mega budget Hollywood films

This would involve foreign technicians especially in the usage of various mechanical effects and made to look extremley realistic Cg graphics

As a final word a biopic on Veerappan for me will amount to the most special film ever because Veerappan the character was the most special ever

-Ram Gopal Varma