On Monday, the makers of Vijay Deverakonda’s upcoming big ticket film Kingdom finally announced July 31 as the new release date for the film. The film was earlier scheduled for a May 31 release, before the team decided to push the release to avoid a clash with Pawan Kalyan’s Hari Hara Veera Mallu. Reportedly, the film was also postponed because the team decided to reshoot a few portions. In a recent media interaction, Vijay Deverakonda spoke about the challenges for outsiders in Telugu cinema, especially when it comes to having a say on final scripts before they go for shoot.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Vijay Deverakonda reflected on his journey in last 10 years, adding, “The learnings are some part being more mature, more in control.”
The actor talked about how he often felt he didn’t have enough freedom to say no to big makers, vaguely hinting to nepokids and their higher authority levels about the same. The actor elaborated, “When you do not come from an establishment or do not have that support system, you do not have the space to tell the director, ‘I am not ready to go for shoot yet; script needs more work.’ Whereas, I know of an actor with similar experience but who has the support around him. He knows that he won’t have to go to shoot, or his father will go to the director and ask them to spend more time on a script. I’ve never had that space.”
Further talking about how he gradually learnt to reclaim that space, Vijay added, “Only recently, I have started taking that space where if I am not happy with something, I will talk to my producer-director team and say I can’t shoot this. Earlier you felt obligated when the producers said they needed to shoot this, or the director felt the script was good enough. Now I have decided if we do it, we should all be solidly happy with it.”
Among other subjects, the Kingdom actor also spoke about why he chose to remove ‘The’ from his tagname, why he prefers to be PR-trained, and how he has made peace with Arjun Reddy forever remaining a part of his legacy.
Directed by Gowtham Tinnanuri, Kingdom also stars Bhagyashri Borse.
