Hyderabad: Akshay Akkineni, the son of legendary Tollywood editor Sreekar Prasad, is all set to make his directorial debut in Bollywood with Pizza in 3D. It is a remake of the 2010 hit Tamil movie of the same name. Over the years, it has been dubbed in Telugu, remade in Kannada as Whistle and is now being adapted in Bengali cinema as Golpo Holeo Shotti.
Akshay says, “I chose this film because I wanted to do the remake on my terms and conditions.”
We have changed a lot in the movie, the audiences will see a wider plot this time. Also, the entire film is shot in 3D, with TS5 equipment. This is normally used for Hollywood films like Spiderman, Transformers, etc.”
Quite naturally, the debutant director is also under a lot of pressure. “Though I don’t show it, subconsciously I feel the pressure. But, I am getting used to it slowly.”
Though Akshay’s surname is Akkineni, there’s no connection with Nagarjuna’s family. He laughs, “Since my childhood, people have been asking me this. I still don’t have an answer to that. I feel that two or three generations back there might have been some family connection. But none of us know the details.”
Since Akshay hails from a family that already has a strong hold in the film industry, was it easy for him? He says, “Not at all; I had my share of struggles. Now-a-days, people don’t see where you come from. What they are interested to know is whether you are well-versed with your work.
“I assisted director Bejoy Nambiar for long and we share an amazing equation. One day he came and asked me to direct the remake of Pizza. I thought that it was a prank, but later I realised that he was being serious. After thinking a lot about it, I decided to do the film.
Like many, Akshay too had picked engineering, “I had finished my engineering course and had got a good rank and was planning to join the IIT. But then my dream was to do something in films and so I did not join the IIT, all for the love of films.”
“Later I got in touch with director Vishnuvardhan who is a family friend and I confessed to him that I wanted to be in films. He offered me an internship on the sets of his film and I worked as an assistant director in the Telugu movie Panja that starred Pawan Kalyan,” he adds.
