'Eega': a housefly set to take south Indian cinema by storm

by TS Sudhir The world of houseflies has one swatter less. That is film director Rajamouli, whose film `Eega’ (housefly in Telugu) is releasing this Friday. “My relationship with the housefly has changed significantly because I have spent the last two years with it, studying it, observing it. So when I see a housefly, I can no longer swat it, I feel guilty,” smiles Rajamouli. [caption id=“attachment_365409” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“A still from the film ‘Eega’. Screen grab from CNN IBN”]  [/caption] Rajamouli, the director of the Telugu superhit Magadheera with Chiranjeevi’s son Ram Charan in the lead role, is now making a hero out of a housefly. For those of you wondering “eeks, a housefly and why?”, the plot has the answer. Hero loves heroine. Villain also loves heroine. Villain kills hero. Hero is reborn as a housefly and takes revenge on the villain. Samantha and Nani play the lead pair while Sudeep is playing the negative role in `Eega’. What makes `Eega’ a breakthrough film in Indian cinema is that it is India’s first high quality creature film, with one and a half hour of live action animation out of the total duration of 2 hours 10 minutes. The amount of rigging that has gone into it is far more than in Robot or Ra.One and the housefly will be able to do 20 more things than what the mosquito did in Robot. The film releases with 1,000 prints in Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam, with plans to release it in Hindi (and even 3D) depending on the response to the regional versions. Some one hundred prints will also be released in north India, with English subtitles. For filmgoers, used to seeing cute dogs, cats, monkeys or deadly snakes in Indian cinema or dinosaurs or Godzillas in Hollywood, a not-so-loveable housefly may seem like a not-so-superhit idea. However, in this case, the filmmakers seem convinced that the insignificance of the housefly is its USP. That even a creature as ordinary as a housefly can wreak havoc and take revenge, if it wants to. And they promise you that by the end of the film, the audience will be rooting for the same zzzzzzzzzz housefly. `Eega’ as an idea was planted in Rajamouli’s head by his father some 15 years ago. It was then the story of a fly that is trying to irritate a person. Seeing the audience react positively to the special effects in Magadheera and the simplicity of the storyline of Maryada Ramanna (another hit from his stable), gave Rajamouli the confidence that he could pull something like this off. The gestation period was long. The pre-production work took six months, with much of the time going into getting a housefly ready that could do different kind of movements. Shooting took another nine months and post-production has been happening almost simultaneously. As many 2,234 shots were worked on with help from studios in Russia and the US. The fly was designed by two studios in London and Iran. It is essentially the CG work that has ended up creating a hole of 30 crore rupees in the producer’s pocket. What has finally come out is a fairytale, Chandamama kind of revenge tale, that should appeal to children. The censors have given it a U/A certificate, with an eye on the excessive cigarette smoking the villain indulges in. Suresh Babu who is presenting the film says the cigarette smoking was essential to the plot because the villain ends up burning himself, when attacked by the housefly. The trailer of the film that released three months back, created quite a stir with inquiries coming in from Mumbai. The hope in Hyderabad is that Eega will inspire story writers and filmmakers to think of doing non-people films, especially since the film has shown that it is possible to do decent to good quality animation in Indian cinema. The trailer got over 5 lakh hits in two weeks when it was released on Youtube. Here’s a glimpse of it: