GALATTA EXCLUSIVE: Karthik Subbaraj reveals secrets about his gangster film with Dhanush

Director Karthik Subbaraj's 2019 has been a magical year as he tasted blockbuster success with his Petta, which had 'Superstar' Rajinikanth in the lead role. Post Petta, Karthik Subbaraj announced he's going to team up with Dhanush under producer S. Sashikanth's Y Not Studios banner for a project tentatively titled, D40. The film also has in its star cast names like Malayalam actress Aishwarya Lekshmi playing the female lead followed by National Award-winning actor Joju George, Game of Thrones star James Cosmo, Kalaiyarasan, Super Deluxe fame Ashwanth Ashok Kumar among others in starring roles with music by Santhosh Narayanan. 

Billed to be an international gangster film, D40, is expected to wrap up production by mid-January 2020 and has its story predominantly set in the United Kingdom. With a major leg of filming wrapped up a while back in London, director Karthik Subbaraj and the D40 team are now back in Tamil Nadu and are currently filming the final schedule at Madurai. Karthik Subbaraj had recently sat down for an interview with Galatta and went on to speak about how different his film is going to be in terms of being a gangster action drama.

Karthik Subbaraj states, "First up, when I have an actor like Dhanush, it is not going to be a completely new effort for me as a filmmaker to do a gangster film. The character Dhanush is portraying is unique and doesn't fall anywhere on the radar as one in the regular template as there will be a mixture of genres in terms of the story. It starts as a gangster film, but is more than that. The discussion for this film with Dhanush had begun as soon as I had wrapped up Iraivi in 2016 and he had agreed to do it. As we began discussing with Y Not Studios, that was when 'Thalaivar' (Rajinikanth) had called me and said we can do Petta. Both Dhanush and producer Sashikanth were kind enough to give me the time to complete Petta and a year had passed after that. So, if you see, Dhanush sir was there right from the beginning. He has been keen to play this role because he took a big liking to the character we had developed. Making a gangster film in London is not like a song shoot and the scope of the story is massive as the budget is huge. Considering all these factors, there was a point when I was contemplating to work on another script, which was when Dhanush told me to not give up on what we had worked on developing so far."

Watch Karthik Subbaraj speak about his D40 with Dhanush and more in the interview below: