Killing Veerappan Press Meet by Ram Gopal Varma

In Ram Gopal Varma's words...

I was interested in Veerappan subject from a long time. 12 years ago, I thought of producing a movie called "Let's Catch Veerappan". In that movie, three people will try to catch Veerappan for the price reward on Veerappan. It should have been directed by  Shimit Amin (Chak de India director). Veerappan was killed even before the film shooting. Movies point is to catch Veerappan, when Veerappan died I felt movies point is meaningless, so I stopped that project.

Later on, I thought of taking a movie on Veerappan Autobiography. By then people came to know about Veerappan's life through books and documentaries. So that thought also got shelved.

A year ago I heard about a police officer Mr.Senthamarai Kannan.He was the head of Veerappan intelligence operation. Task force Head Mr.Vijaykumar praised him very much in the media. Police officers before Kannan tried to catch Veerappan in the forest but Kannan wants to get him out of the forest. There were no limits for my enthusiasm When I heard about the details of the operation that had happened.

Then I wanted everyone in the country to know these details because Veerappan is one of the most important chapters in Indian criminal history.

Shivraj is playing the main cop role in this movie. He played a significant role in the plan to kill Veerappan. The reason to take Shivraj Kumar for this role is that I want the person of that age, looks, and performance. Apart of that, he was also the son of Rajkumar who was kidnapped by Veerappan, so the value of the whole casting has been increased because in this movie reel life hero kills the villain in real life.

Initially, Shivraj asked me why to do a story which is well known to everyone, later I have explained how I want to describe the story, he was very impressed.

Because of star image of Shivraj, I had a doubt whether he will agree for that character or not, but Shivraj admitted immediately. I am very impressed with Shivraj performance. I liked capturing Hayya Hayya song which was sung by Shivraj along with his character.

In real life, there are no similarities between Sandeep and Veerappan. The credit goes to the make-up artist Vikram Gaikwad. He transformed Sandeep completely as Veerappan. Sandeep is a great actor. He should be credited because he has completely involved in the Veerappan role both physically and mentally. People who have already seen the film said after the film release people may forget original Veerappan and remember Sandeep as Veerappan.

Parul Yadav, a real-life character selected to capture Veerappan by the police from normal people. Normally police will not select people for these type of special operations they will select new faces for safety reasons. Due to safety reasons, we have hidden the real name of that girl. Parul Yadav did justice to her role.

Veerappan's real life wife Muthulakshmi character was played by Yagna. When I met Muthulakshmi she said about operations done by police. Because of the similarities between Muthulakshmi and Yagna, the character is well played. As I know for the first time in a film, there is a love story for a villain but not for a hero.

In the scene where Veerappan has killed his own daughter, they asked to take the crying sound of the child. So we have to mute the sound in that scene.

Earlier, I don’t know that Muthi Laxmi has expressed objections on the films that came on Veerappan. About our film, Muthulakshmi thought we are showing her husband Veerappan who saved the forest and the animals in the forest from some corrupt government officials in a negative role. She also thought because of showing Veerappan in the negative role there might be differences coming between Kannada and Tamil people.

The old real-life story related information will come from different angles and from different sources. I made this film by collecting a wide range of information from the police of Karnataka and Tamilnadu who tried to catch Veerappan, Veerappan followers, relatives and some other people those who can't give their names. Therefore, what I have shown in the movie is true. But due to some security reasons, the time period and some character names have been changed. I did not mention details about the officer who was in the film, where he belongs to and the time period of the story because in my film I'm saying about necessary details of specific individuals.

As I know there are 3 types of viewers of this film:

      1.Those who do not know about Veerappan
      2. Those who know a little but do not know it in detail about Veerappan
      3. Those who know everything about Veerappan.

First group people do not know anything so this story will be new to them because there is no another criminal like Veerappan in the Asian criminal history. More than that no one would not even look the police character played by Shivraj.

Second group people know a little bit about Veerappan so they are excited to know Veerappan story in detail.

Third group people know everything about Veerappan but there is a difference between the story they know and the film because they don’t know the story which I know. But after watching the film they say no one can show Veerappan story in detail.