Starting Varun Dhawan and Samantha Ruth Prabh, Citadel: Honey Bunny, part of Prime Video’s Citadel franchise is set to begin streaming on November 7th.
The action thriller tells the story of stuntman Bunny, who recruits struggling actress Honey for a side gig. They are hurled into a high-stakes world of action, espionage, and betrayal. Years later, as their dangerous past catches up, the estranged Honey and Bunny must reunite and fight to protect their young daughter, Nadia.
For an intense spy thriller, Honey Bunny seems like a very tongue-in-cheek title. And Raj Nidimoru taking time off from his hectic post-production work explains. “Ah, Honey Bunny, we wanted a contradictory title to an action drama. So, it’s kind of ironical. Ironical and also it’s got a couple of meanings. That, you know, you have this very intense action drama going on, but it’s called something as frivolous as Honey Bunny. It’s like a child thing, you know, because it’s got a child in the middle, etc. And Varun and Samantha are like the mother and father to this kid. And it’s an endearment. We wanted to go for an endearment. Like a darling, honey bunny, sweetheart, pumpkin. So, initially, the idea is to use this girl as a honey trap. Yes, then she comes out of it. The same thing with Bunny (Varun), you know, like a fun guy, like an action stuntman. They have all these fun names.”
Casting Varun Dhawan and Samantha Ruth Prabhu together seems like a bit of a stretch. Says Raj, “Yeah, it is interesting. And yes, Varun has actually, if you think about it, Varun hasn’t done action before. So, it’s his first action role.
But Samantha has done action with you and very effectively in The Family Man 2.
Very effective and very straight-faced, dry role. Yeah. So, we could have a range this time. So, it’ll be fun to see a Honey turning into a warrior. They’ve delivered and how, both of them, really, really, delivered in those challenging locations. Varun did it as if he was built to be an action hero and a serious role. So, he aced it. And that’s our idea because I always feel that many, at least some of the actors, have the potential to do a lot of things. It’s just a matter of getting that character. So, similarly, Samantha in Family Man 2, she hadn’t done action before, she hadn’t held a gun before Family Man 2. And the kind of amazing fame that it got her! I mean, let’s be realistic, that’s her claim to fame because her feature films have not really worked, sadly? So, you just saw a different side of her. You wouldn’t think that action might be effective with her. She has to hit four or five guys at the same time.”
Raj explains how Citadel: Honey Bunny takes the action genre to a different direction. “We have shifted into a new gear; we’ve taken a different genre this time. An action drama genre, which we haven’t done before. And more than that, I feel in the current world of action cinema, where everything is high-tech and glossy, right? So, we thought in the middle of all this, what if we go back in time and take out all the gadgets? I’m talking about the contemporary actionscape. In general, the actions came across anywhere. You know, Mission Impossible 2, everything, Fast and Furious 2, even in India. Basically, everybody is doing modern action. Action is all modern right now. And we thought, why don’t we do it more brittle, grounded, earthy, organic? Fists and, you know, revolvers, you know. Traditional, more old-fashioned, and traditional. More traditional and keep it very personal, the fights. Both actors, Varun and Samantha, had to do their action for it to be effective and not just have stunt doubles for them. So, they had to pretty much do most of the action.They had to push themselves. Push the actors to get to that level.”
Raj and his directorial partner have shut themselves from public expectations. “You just have to insulate yourself from extraneous forces. You just have to think. You know, once you fall in that trap. You just do what you want to do. When we do another Family Man or when we do Stree , we aren’t thinking about how it will turn out. I’m glad to see that a creation, another genre creation that we did has gone so far that it doesn’t require stars.
“Even in Stree 1, we thought it would do decently at box office and that was a big success because it was really going only on the concept at that point. Nobody expected it to go on to some 175 crores. This is crazy. So, I can see that the power of high concepts, power of a fresh perspective on a genre is what I’m seeing escalate more and more, which is awesome.”
Everyone wants to know when Family Man is coming back? “We started shooting Family Man 3 and we’ve almost done 75% of it. So, we have maybe by another month or so, we’ll be done with the shoot. Same cast with a couple of additions.”
What Raj-DK achieved on OTT through The Family Man makes them game-changer. Raj disagrees. “We haven’t set out to make any change in the game.And I’m very happy that it’s making a mark. And these shows are working. Each one is different from the other. As for this one (Honey Bunny), more than anything else, it’s the, I think the… the franchise. The colossal effort that’s going into it in terms of a global idea. That so many filmmakers, so many creative minds getting together and creating a world across the world. It’s like a pan-world feeling, right? In terms of Italians coming together, now Mexicans, now somebody else is on. So, it’s like, you know, it’s just a fascinating idea to be part of. The journey, the world, with all these different schools of filmmaking, different tones, different styles coming in together. That was the biggest draw for us in terms of let’s do one. We’ve never collaborated with anyone, right? The only collaboration we have is with (writer) Sita Menon.
“We even heard The Citadel American version at the writing, at the script level. We were all part of the reading. So, that was pretty cool to be included in there. And I could see each one was totally different. The Russo brothers’ collaboration… if you see their work, they’re very, very self-aware. So, I like the fact that they are, they were independent filmmakers. Just the two of them, writing, directing, producing. And where they started off, and where they ended up being… massive, some two billion something Avengers Endgame made. And just the journey and how an Indie filmmaker could go on top of the filmmaking world. So, they had the resources, they had the plans, they had the ideas. We were treated the same and we all were discussing on the same level. It’s just that I don’t think our productions work like that. Like every dollar and rupee is different. So, what it costs to make something here is different from what it costs to make something in America. We’re always amazed that, oh my God, it cost them 10 million dollars to make that feature film. And that a similar story in India would have cost us 10 crores too. So, you know, that’s just the way it costs in India. So, to each version, its own vibe, I guess. We shot Honey Bunny like an Indian production. We were not shooting it like a Hollywood production. We shot it like how we shoot The Family Man . At those budgets, at that production, at our own production, our own style, our own way of working.”
