Even before the opening season of Suzhal: The Vortex was shot, creator duo Pushkar-Gayatri had begun writing its second instalment in 2020. But after the Tamil crime thriller premièred to glowing reviews on Prime Video in 2022, the creators started from scratch again. Their intention was simple—to give the audience a bigger story. “That was a different story, set against a different festival. But when we received love for the first season, we felt we needed to give the audience something more. We went back to the drawing board and re-wrote a lot. This looks bigger and better than season one,” smiles Gayatri.
Gayatri and Pushkar
Like the first edition, the upcoming season too is set against a festival—this time, it’s the Ashtakaali festival. Why do festivals play a crucial role in the Kathir and Aishwarya Rajesh-led thriller? Juxtaposition, says Pushkar. “You have a large celebration, where people have a common faith. On the other hand, you have a crime investigation, where the base idea is to suspect everything. That contrast brought the idea of Suzhal,” he explains.
While they have shown their expertise in long-form storytelling with Suzhal, filmmaking remains their big love. In 2022, the Tamil filmmaker duo made their Bollywood debut with Vikram Vedha, which was an adaptation of their 2017 Tamil hit of the same name. The Hrithik Roshan and Saif Ali Khan-starrer tanked at the box office. They admit that the underwhelming performance was heartbreaking, but left them with an important lesson.
“After you spend so long on a project, when that kind of response comes in, the [bubble] bursts. For some time, the hurt [lingers]. But one big learning is that we need to anticipate where the audience will be at the end of the filmmaking process. It takes two-three years to write the script, pitch it to actors, assemble the project and release it. For us, it’s even worse because we take half a decade to write,” says Pushkar. There was another reason for its failure, chips in Gayatri. “We started the film before the pandemic. By the time it released, a lot of people had seen the Tamil version on OTT. It was also on TV a bunch of times.”
Left wiser with these lessons, will the filmmaker duo make their next project in Hindi soon? Pushkar says, “One of the scripts that we are working on needs to be set in Tamil Nadu, the other could be in any metropolis—Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi or Mumbai. All filmmakers are determining [which language to make a film in] based on how authentic they will be to that place.”