Directors today are juggling many tasks at a time and Gautham Menon is no exception. He has been successful as a filmmaker, producer and as screen writer too. Now, the maverick director has ventured into the sought-after online platform. He is producing a web-series titled Weekend Machan, under his home banner Ondraga Entertainment.
Directed by Shammeer Sultan, the series stars YouTube channel Madras Central fame Sudhakar, Kiran Naig, Shravan Ramakrishnan and Balaji Radhakrishnan.
As the title suggests, the series is about four young IT employees, who look forward to execute their weekend plans. Talking to DC, Shammeer says, “I have had this particular idea for years now! I worked at an IT company for eight years and weekends were everything for us. Everyone hates Monday and I wanted to weave my story around this fact by incorporating humour. This series consists of eight episodes.”
Recalling how he got into the field, he reveals, “Back in college, I used to be part of a band and eventually started writing music novels. We came out with three music novels – Ranam Sugam, Neon Nagaram and Ranam Sugam 2. The concept of a music novel is that after every chapter, there is a song that will capture the feel of the chapter. It was a great hit in the college! Then we ventured into short films and my first film Un Kitta Onnu Sollanum Machan made it to theatres through Karthik Subbaraj’s anthology Aviyal. I also helmed another short film Naan 8, which won several awards. That is when we met GVM and he really liked the concept of the film.”
When Shammeer met GVM, he was unsure whether the filmmaker would appreciate the idea. “When I narrated the story, GVM felt an instant connect and while watching the first episode, he laughed out loud at several comical moments. I was conscious not to narrate any love stories because he has done it all. I’m glad that he liked the idea of Weekend Machan.”
