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HanuMan's Teja Sajja: ‘Refused 70-75 projects, only worked on this for 2.5 years, did all stunts myself’
Basking in the stupendous success of his superhero sci-fi film HanuMan, actor Teja Sajja gets talking about the making of the Prasanth Varma movie.
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His film HanuMan took everyone by surprise, with it’s long legs at the box office. A comparitively small film in terms of budget, it managed to garner collections exceeding ₹200 crores, and praise for smart use of VFX. Teja Sajja, the protagonist, shares that a lot of sacrifice and hard work went into making the film. Also read | HanuMan review: Teja Sajja’s superhero film kicks off Prasanth Varma's cinematic universe
Teja Sajja on his desi superhero look
“Before we started, we wanted to crack the desi superhero look. I did 25 look tests, usually an actor does two or three and finalises one. Once we started shooting, it was a very strenuous process for action sequences. There are no head replacement shots like in big budget films. Every stunt in the film was performed by me, even including underwater sequences. We didn’t have the budget, so I learnt scuba diving. We figured other ways to do crane shots,” Teja Sajja shares.
In the two and a half years that it took for the film to be completed, Teja Sajja didn’t take up other projects. “I did only this film. There were many other opportunities I must have rejected, about 70-75 that came my way in this journey. At Least 15 would have been considerably decent projects. I was always committed to HanuMan,” he adds.
On HanuMan box office
What does he think about the numbers? For a film made on such small numbers to do massive business is no small feat in today’s times. The actor says, “Ultimately, numbers translate into the number of people who watched the film, so I am more happy for that. My concern was I didn’t want to make a film which would have been a success only. If people liked it too, then that was a bonus. We succeeded in doing that. Even after the first few premieres in Hyderabad, I saw an overwhelming response, and didn’t even look at the box office numbers after that.”
