FC Disruptors: Prashant Neel

The fact that a three-film old 30-something is constantly being compared to directors like Shankar and S.S. Rajamouli is proof enough of what Prashant Neel has managed to achieve. He gambled big time with the K.G.F. films, a pan-Indian pioneering effort long before the word became boring. But he doubled down on this to make the biggest hit of the year and one the biggest ever grossers with a cleaner, bigger and meaner K.G.F.: Chapter 2 that changed the very conversation around Kannada cinema. In what is now being looked at plainly as a machismo-driven testosterone fest, along the lines of older Amitabh Bachchan films, he also gave an intensely mad mother-son story, with a painfully moving ending. With its over-the-top imagery and the mega charisma of its lead ‘Rocking Star Yash’, mass cinema has proved that it will always have takers and the power to keep theatres running, even after two years of shutdown.