Exclusive: Jyothi Krisna Reveals Everything Pawan Had To Endure For HHVM

Pawan Kalyan believed in Jyothi’s vision

After Hari Hara Veera Mallu took off in January 2020, it was badly hit by first and second waves of Covid-19. Subsequently, the period drama came to a grinding halt due to Pawan’s political commitments. The film’s director Krish too left the project for personal and professional reasons. At a time when many expressed doubts over the film’s revival, Jyothi Krisna (producer AM Rathnam’s son) who was until that point working as an executive producer, stepped up. “While retaining the original idea and backdrop (Mughals), I wrote a story of how I envisioned Pawan sir in a similar role. I changed the story and worked on how to scale the film and made it more relevant to today’s times. I built this historical film on a massive canvas, giving the film the larger than life appeal it deserves. I narrated it to Pawan sir, and he instantly liked it. He believed in my vision and the depth in my writing, and asked me to direct the film,” shares Jyothi Krisna, giving us a backstory on how he came on board.

Pawan Kalyan still from Hari Hara Veera Mallu

Krisna knew he had a monumental task ahead of him. But in retrospection, instead of following the conventional path of filmmaking, he made a smart choice — completed the entire film in previsualization first. Pawan was impressed with this approach to filmmaking. “Since Pawan garu is also busy with politics, we wanted to create an atmosphere where he can cut down his travelling time and has sufficient time at his disposal to shoot for our film. Initially, he shuttled between Hyderabad and Mangalagiri (Pawan Kalyan’s political camp office in Vijayawada) for nearly one month,” reveals the director.

Weathering the storm

One of the biggest challenges for Krisna when he took over the directorial reins was the timeline, and the crew that had already left. The film was already delayed, and Pawan’s packed-political duties only added to the shooting woes. But the previsualization work of the director came in handy, and was extremely critical for film’s shooting. It made him believe that the shooting can be done in Mangalagiri itself, and that Pawan need not shuttle between Hyderabad and Vijayawada.

A still from Hari Hara Veera Mallu

“When I shared the idea with Pawan garu, he asked, ‘Is it possible? I assured him, ‘Yes sir, we can do it because we have done extensive previsualization’. He was so happy. We took a few acres of land in Mangalagiri and shot a major portion of the film there. We built lavish sets apart from shooting action sequences. Pawan sir gave us around 2-3 hours every day with more than 400 crew working on the film. While attending political meetings he also used to shoot for the film, and that saved a lot of time.” Towards the end, Pawan felt guilty of making people travel to Mangalagiri from Hyderabad. He didn’t want to trouble the film unit anymore and said that he himself would travel to Hyderabad and wrap up the remaining part. “We shot Hari Hara Veera Mallu for over 200 working days with hundreds of crew members working for the film daily.”