'Planning a sequel to Antariksham'

Director Sankalp Reddy's second film Antariksham 9000 KMPH is set for release on December 21. Starring Varun Tej, Aditi Rao Hydari and Lavanya Tripathi in the lead, the film has cinematography by Gnanasekhar VS. The director asserts that the story behind the making of this sci-fi space thriller is as interesting as the film itself. "The idea germinated three months after the release of Ghazi. An article in a newspaper about space made a deep impression on me. I instantly wrote a story and gave it a cinematic adaptation matching with our sensibilities," says Sankalp.

The director says a lot of research went into this film. "We met a few scientists from ISRO and got a lot of inputs to conceive the characters. We also gathered a lot of information from the NASA portal and other space-related documents on the Internet. We began the shoot on May 3 and completed the film in 70 days straight. Major portions of the film were shot in Annapurna Studios and about 40 days were filmed on specially constructed zero-gravity sets."

The young director has rubbished the rumours of his film being inspired by Hollywood films Gravity, Interstellar and the recently released Tamil film, Tik Tik Tik. "Antariksham is not inspired from any other film. It is a sci-fi space thriller, but the story is not similar. It's quite fictional and the story is based on a particular event and so was my debut film Ghazi."

Challenges are not new to Sankalp, but the director says that shooting for Antariksham was something else. "We faced several unpredictable challenges. Especially, it was hard for our actors to pull off the zero-gravity sequences as we shot them using ropes for 40 days. The atmosphere on the sets was real and I don’t want any of us to be distracted."

He reveals that some creative inputs came from director Krish, who is one of the producers the film. "Krish had suggested a few changes and his inputs really helped us to make a quality output. It was great to have him as our producer."

Sankalp's already signed two Hindi films. "I have signed a film each with Bollywood producers Ronnie Screwvala and Vipul Shah. I'm also flirting with the idea of making a sequel to Antariksham with the same production house. I’m not quite sure which project among these will start rolling first," he signs off.