Christopher Nolan is our guru: 2018 movie's Jude Anthany Joseph on how the director inspired his film

The success of director Jude Anthany Joseph’s 2018 is even more astounding as the movie was made on a considerably smaller budget than most disaster films in the world and has used minimal VFX. The Tovino Thomas-starrer, which has already grossed Rs 140 Cr at the box office worldwide, is now all set for its pan-Indian release in other languages.

In an exclusive chat with OTTplay, Jude tells us about how he went about approaching the movie, while keeping its budgetary limitations and the challenges in consideration.

Also read: 2018 director Jude Anthany Joseph on Sony LIV's feedback after picking up its OTT rights 

“Whenever you try to venture into an area that you aren’t familiar with, you look at other films for references. So, when I was looking at other disaster films that have been made over the years, the budgets of all of them were minimum Rs 600 Cr. I was thinking how am I ever going to pull this off?” says Jude. “I didn’t want to compete with these films but when I am making a movie of the similar genre, there has to be some standard to justify; it can’t be just another attempt.”

The filmmaker explains that he was convinced that the movie will need a “high budget” and yet when it is made in Malayalam, “there’s a limitation to how much the budget can stretch”. “The way around it was to stick to practical effects. It’s expensive to show water through VFX; the more real it has to look, the more expensive it becomes. I thought the best way was to use minimal VFX,” he says.

Also read: 2018 review: The Kerala story of hope, humanity and resilience, expertly crafted by Jude Anthany Joseph 

Jude says that he was inspired by Interstellar director Christopher Nolan’s work. “It’s more like how Christopher Nolan approaches his films. He is our guru. He depends on practical effects and doesn’t rely extensively on CGI and VFX. He would shoot with props and practical sets and then use VFX to support these scenes. That’s what we have done as well,” says the director.

2018, which is based on the devastating Kerala floods of the year, also has Asif Ali, Kunchacko Boban, Lal, Narain, Vineeth Sreenivasan, Aparna Balamurali and Tanvi Ram as part of the cast. The film will release in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada on May 26.