‘Naa Ready’ Was Not in the Original Plan for Leo, Says Lokesh

Vijay and Lokesh Kanagaraj’s “Leo” was released amid huge expectations as it was Lokesh’s immediate film after the blockbuster “Vikram” and his second collaboration with Vijay after the successful “Master”. The fact of it being a part of the Lokesh Cinematic Universe also added hype around Leo. However, upon its release, Leo received mixed responses and failed to live up to the hype.

Especially, people were disappointed with the poor flashback sequence that comes in the second half, showcasing Vijay’s backstory. They opined that it has dampened the momentum built through the terrific first half. Meanwhile, Lokesh feels that he should be blamed because he failed to showcase the flashback sequence more effectively in a shorter span of time.

In a recent interview, Lokes said that he was confused to keep the flashback episode or not in Leo. “Parthiban (Vijay) character can never dance. We have shown him in that way throughout the first half. Unlike Vijay sir’s other films, there was no intro dance number in Leo. Still, I felt the audience would feel disappointed and designed the coffee shop scene in the first half, where Vijay sir dances with his kid.

But from the production and marketing perspective, we needed a dance number at any cost. So, in the second half, I cut to the flashback with the dance number. I feel that having a runtime of 30 minutes for flashback would have been better. But theatres wouldn’t accept such a huge runtime for a film. Thus, I had no option but to wrap the flashback in 18 minutes to end the film in the required runtime. That’s the reason why we received mixed reviews for the flashback, but I should be blamed for it,” he added.