Sandeep Reddy Vanga interview on ‘Animal’: Ranbir Kapoor is a great performer, will not let the audience relax for a second

Sandeep Reddy Vanga interview on ‘Animal’: Ranbir Kapoor is a great performer, will not let the audience relax for a second. The film also starring Anil Kapoor, Rashmika Mandanna and Bobby Deol releases on December 1. Sandeep Vanga earlier made the much-debated films Arjun Reddy and Kabir Singh.

Sandeep Reddy Vanga, the writer-director of Animal starring Ranbir Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Rashmika Mandanna and Bobby Deol, is aware of the frenzied reactions the film’s trailer has generated, but hasn’t had the time to read them. “Ranbir, my brother (co-producer Pranay Vanga) and Bhushan Kumar (producer) called and told me about the feedback and I went back to finalising the post-production. I haven’t had the time,” he says, speaking to The Hindu for an interview during a brief visit to Hyderabad. 

If a Sandeep Vanga film is around the corner, there are also bound to be debates. While fanboys talk about how he plays by his own rules of filmmaking, others sound a note of caution about the troubled protagonists in his films. A fan of David Fincher and Martin Scorsese, he says he enjoys deviating from the norm in terms of how he looks at a character, story and his editing process.

Excerpts from the interview: 

Your films, Arjun Reddy (remade as Kabir Singh in Hindi) and Animal, have stories driven by troubled protagonists. What draws you to such characters?

Troubled characters make for great drama. Before launching a product, the tendency is to compare it with what is available in the market. That is one of the yardsticks, though not the primary one, when I work on an idea. Animal is the story of a father and son; I wanted to see what new I could explore within the framework of that relationship.

You had stated that the character of Arjun Reddy was inspired by real life and then dramatised. Is there a similar inspiration for Ranbir’s character from real life?

I studied in a school run by Aga Khan Education Service in Warangal, Telangana. I had a few friends whose parents were working in Oman and Dubai. These boys would be dying to meet their respective fathers once a year. The longing I saw in them stayed with me subconsciously and I used it to shape Ranbir’s character. The dark zone, of course, is fiction.