Reports are that Pooja Hegde is in talks to play the female lead in the upcoming Telugu film Valmiki. Starring Varun Tej in the lead, the film will be directed by Harish Shankar. It may be noted here that Pooja Hegde is well acquainted with both Varun Tej and Harish Shankar as she had worked with the former in Mukunda and the latter in Duvvada Jagannadham. However, she has not given her go ahead for Valmiki yet as her role in it requires much lesser screen time. Pooja is weighing the consequences of starring in such a film and is yet to take a call on it, say sources.
Interestingly, Valmiki will be the remake of the hit Tamil movie Jigarthanda. Reports are that Harish Shankar is not planning it as an exact remake but will be making some changes to the script to suit the Telugu audience. Devi Sri Prasad has been roped in to compose the tunes for this flick. It will be bankrolled by Ram Achanta and Gopi Achanta under their banner. Varun Tej will be playing a gangster in this flick.
It may be noted here that the original version in Tamil was written and directed by Karthik Subburaj and had Siddharth, Bobby Simha and Lakshmi Menon in the lead roles with Nassar, Ambika, Karunakaran and Sangili Murugan playing the supporting roles. The film fetched the National Film Awards for Best Supporting Actor for Bobby Simha and Best Editing for Vivek Harshan.
The technical crew of Jigarthanda included Santosh Narayanan for music, Gavemic U Ary for cinematography and Vivek Harshan for editing. The film was bankrolled by Kathiresan under his banner SMS Pictures. Made on a budget of Rs 10 crore, it fetched around Rs 35 crore at the box office.
(Content provided by Digital Native)