After earning critical acclaim with Yevade Subramanyam and Mahanati, director Nag Ashwin rose to national fame with the 2024 epic Kalki 2898 AD, a mythological science-fiction action drama.
Featuring a stellar ensemble cast — Prabhas, Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, and Kamal Haasan in lead roles — the film also included cameos by Dulquer Salmaan, Mrunal Thakur, Vijay Deverakonda, and filmmakers SS Rajamouli and Ram Gopal Varma.
Made on a massive budget of ₹600 crore, Kalki 2898 AD became a box office blockbuster, grossing ₹1,050 crore worldwide.
It emerged as the second-highest-grossing Indian film of 2024, behind Sukumar’s Pushpa 2: The Rule, starring Allu Arjun, Rashmika Mandanna, and Fahadh Faasil.
Recently, Nag Ashwin interacted with students at the B V Raju Institute of Technology in Narsapur, Telangana.
During the session a journalist asked him: "In this age when people are consuming everything, how hard is it to come up with an original thought?"
Ashwin replied, "I think it happens to a lot of us. You write something, and then suddenly you see a trailer with the same idea or a film with a similar concept."
When asked if any idea of his was reflected in an existing film, Ashwin revealed: "I once had an idea very similar to Inception. It wasn't the same, but around 2007 or 2008, I was writing something related to memories, and then Inception came out, which was about dreams. When I saw the trailer, I dropped the idea. It affected me so deeply that I went into depression for a week."
He went on to emphasize that authenticity matters more than originality in storytelling today: "Originality is something you can’t control and there’s no point chasing it. What matters more is being authentic. You can make the most unique film, but if it’s not authentic, people won’t connect to it. On the other hand, you can tell a love story that’s been told 10,000 times, but if it’s told with authenticity, people will still feel for those characters."
Inception (2010), written and directed by Christopher Nolan, is a science-fiction heist thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a professional thief who steals secrets by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets through dream-sharing technology.
Widely regarded as a modern classic, the film was a global box office success and featured an ensemble cast including Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Dileep Rao, Ken Watanabe, and Michael Caine.
