At first, director-duo Raj Nidimoru & Krishna DK’s Happy Ending (2013) was set in Mumbai. It was conceptualised around a ‘hack writer’ (as Nidimoru puts it) wearing an AC/DC t-shirt and slippers, living around Carter Road in Bandra, spending his time in the area’s coffee shops and DVD libraries. He’s hired by a fading star to write his ‘comeback film’. The script’s modest setting and intimate flavour was abandoned once Saif Ali Khan agreed to star in and co-produce the film, under his banner Illuminati Films (with Dinesh Vijan and Sunil Lulla). Having made their earlier films on a controlled budget, this was the duo’s first advent into a ‘studio film’. Mumbai became Los Angeles, the duo shot their first lip-sync song, and it was (thankfully) among the last attempts by Khan to play a youngish bachelor in a foreign country (which he had done in Love Aaj Kal and Cocktail – both produced by Illuminati films).
“Happy Ending was the first of our films that had the ‘packaging’: song & dance, romance etc. It was a huge learning experience,” says Nidimoru. The duo wrote their disoriented headspace into the film, where the protagonist (Khan) has an alter-ego called Yogi (also played by Khan, in a fat-suit and sporting a long, true-artist beard) talking into his ear, whenever he is disingenuous. Despite its quirks, Happy Ending was Raj & DK’s first publicised failure. They’d been making films for more than a decade by then, but this was their first film that mattered to the trade. Happy Ending’s failure kickstarted a learning curve that culminated into the critical and commercial success of Stree (2018). In the last six years, the director-duo have been beacons of filmmakers preserving their indie spirit, arrogance and authorial voices among suits, with a streak of four successful shows (including Farzi, India’s most-watched show on OTT services).
In a world where indie filmmakers are chewed out and cast aside after one failed studio project (recently there was concern around Vasan Bala’s future at Dharma after Jigra’s tepid box office response), Nidimoru reflected on the duo’s journey about how they’ve charted their way through a volatile business. After Happy Ending’s failure, there was a lot of sequel work being offered to the duo. “One of the offers was Bang Bang 2. We only know how to make films like ourselves, I don’t think we can replicate someone else’s style.” It was another studio film that became A Gentleman (2017) – a silly, air-brushed spy comedy, starring Sidharth Malhotra, Jacqueline Fernandez and Suniel Shetty. “It was our take on a ‘popcorn film’,” says Nidimoru, “I think more people would’ve enjoyed it, had we made it at the budget of 99 (2007). But the one lesson here was that the packaging will always get more focus than the movie.”
Nidimoru still doesn’t rate A Gentleman poorly, though he knew that the film wouldn’t take off. “The film wasn’t tracking well, which was strange because people hadn’t even seen it. It was probably coming in a bit heavy, and then it opened at the same numbers as Go Goa Gone (Rs 6-7 Cr). I completely gave up on the film by Friday night and started work on Stree by Saturday.” Despite more sequel work on offer by established producers, Nidimoru says the duo decided to make Stree independently—like they’d done with their first three features. Nidimoru and DK picked the cast and the crew of the film while working out of a coffee shop. The budget of Stree was less than Rs 10 crore, and they brought a studio onboard under the terms that nothing in the script would be altered or diluted. The studio faced some last-minute delays, and that’s when Raj & DK went to their former-collaborator Dinesh Vijan, who was now running Maddock Films by himself.
Nidimoru says that the duo is assured because they come from nothing, and that frees them during negotiations. “There’s always self-belief that we can make it on our own. That’s how we started off. If a Go Goa Gone costs Rs 5 Cr to make, we’ll find a way to make it in Rs 2 Cr. But we’ll do it ourselves. When you’re confident, you can walk into studio offices with less to lose.” Nidimoru says he keeps telling young filmmakers to try and self-finance, by raising their own money, instead of relying on studios. It’s a mantra he says the duo follows till date – “For any project I’ll talk to a couple of studios, if it feels like it’s not working out then we do it ourselves.”
Nidimoru still remembers the faces of mainstream producers when he pitched a slacker/zombie comedy, after Shor In The City (2009). “There’s a fear among producers for the ‘new’. They want familiar stories, which run like a well-oiled machine. I have to give kudos to the actors, who chose to work with us after reading the script.” The duo is among the busiest directors today, at the forefront of at least three shows including Family Man S03, Gulkanda Tales and Rakht Brahmand, with the follow-up seasons for Farzi, Guns & Gulaabs – both of which ended on cliffhangers. Citadel: Honey Bunny – the Indian off-shoot of Amazon Prime’s Citadel franchise – released to mixed reviews. But it might still be watched widely, considering the promotional material saying Raj & DK, front and centre.”We’ve always been confident that we can’t make a ‘bad’ film: one that is lazily written, one that only has tropes, where we’re repeating ourselves. And that’s because these things are in our hands,” says Nidimoru.
It might sound a bit arrogant, but he also says the duo knows exactly what is good and bad about their films/shows. “What doesn’t work, you learn from it and try to do better in your next project.”
