Mammootty Stars in India's First WWE-Inspired Film 'Chatha Pacha'

In an exclusive interview to IANS, director Advaith Nayar said, "'Chatha Pacha' is actually a full-on explosive action entertainer. It's India's first WWE-inspired film. We've actually seen films in the boxing space, in the martial arts space, but I actually don't think I've seen anything in India, any films in India that have taken inspiration from WWE and the sort of extravagant kind of wrestling that we see with people creating characters, costumes, storylines, and all of that culminating in these action-packed matches that we all loved growing up."

He goes on to add, "At its core, it's just about a bunch of friends trying to make it in life togetherwith nothing but the dreams that they grew up on. It's based in Kochi because Kochi is one of the South Indian hubs of Gatta Gusthi itself. And if you look at it closely, this pro-wrestling or WWE-style wrestling is nothing but a much more extravagant, much more dramatic and theatric version of Gatta Gusthi itself."

When asked about how he got his actors to prepare for their roles in this film and more significantly about the spark for this plot, the director said, "The most obvious spark was the nostalgia that I personally grew up with. I spent a few of my childhood years living in Chennai with my cousins. We used to watch WWE and we would all go up to the bedroomand they would do all these stunts on me because I was the youngest cousin. I would get thrown around on the bed. I would get thrown off the top of the cupboard and fall onto a beanbag. So, that was the first starting off point for me. This sort of connected when I read up back in 2019 about these smaller wrestling establishments that exist in countries like America or even Mexico or even right now in India even in Kerala actually."

He continued, "The concept behind it is that you have working class people in a city like New York -- say a taxi driver, a butcher, a school teacher and maybe a bank teller. All these kinds of people wrap up work, catch the subway go to a local public school's rented out basketball court like once or twice a week. They arrive around 7pm, start helping each other, wear their own costumes that they've made themselves and set up a ring. For the next two hours these blue collar workers would get to live out the dreams that they never got to because of certain circumstances. They are people who refuse to give up on their dreams no matter what their circumstances are and then they go right back to their real lives. For two hours, twice a week, they get to live out their old dreams."

Stating that he was able to sense this fighting spirit in them, the director said that this fighting spirit was something he'd connected with the people of his city -- Fort Kochi and Mattanchery. "That is because they are fighters; they are survivors; they are dreamers and so, that's how I decided to somehow build on this."

The film has cinematography by Anend C Chandran, editing by Praveen Prabhakar, screenplay by Sanoop Thykkoodam, background score by Mujeeb Majeed, lyrics by Vinayak Sasikumar and action choreography by Kalai Kingson, collectively elevating the film's scale, rhythm, and energy.

The film is scheduled to hit screens worldwide on January 22 this year.

- IANS