Varun Tej-starrer Matka is not a biopic of Ratan Khatri, clarifies writer-director Karuna Kumar

Varun Tej in the film

As soon as Matka's trailer was unveiled, speculation arose that the Varun Tej-starrer was based on the life of Ratan Khatri, who had taken Mumbai by storm in the '60s with matka gambling. However, writer-director Karuna Kumar dismisses the rumour. To him, Khatri's life was only the starting point as he set out to offer a fictional take with the Telugu film. "Matka is not based on Ratan Khatri's life story. It's completely fictional. My film is inspired by the events that occurred in his life between 1958 and 1982; based on that, I have written a [dramatised] script. I want to tell the audience about the game of matka and the Godfather who made it big," starts the director.

Karuna Kumar

Kumar has set his crime drama in Visakhapatnam. Spanning three decades, Matka traces how Tej's character Vasu goes from a nobody to the kingpin of the gambling network across the country. The director reveals that the unit created an elaborate set replicating Visakhapatnam of the '60s at Ramoji Rao Studios in Hyderabad. "In those days, Vizag was a fishing village. I processed and recreated more than 3,600 images from that period.

We used some of them as the ads appearing on billboards, in certain scenes. Others were used as references to study the hairstyles or architecture of those days. My wife is from Vizag, which is a base for matka gambling. [A member of] my wife's family knew somebody from the gambling network. So, that helped with the research," he says, adding that the movie was also shot at real locations in Visakhapatnam, Kakinada and Mumbai.

In Tej, the director found the perfect actor to show the rise and fall of a gambling king. "Varun is a down-to-earth and hard-working actor who fit the role perfectly. His character grows old in the film, and we used a lot of prosthetics for that look. Since Varun was brought up in Chennai and then shifted to Hyderabad, he didn't know the Vizag culture at all. We did many workshops and look tests before shooting the film." Kumar is equally impressed by Nora Fatehi, who makes her Telugu debut with the movie. "She learnt all her Telugu dialogues before coming on the set; we didn't have to dub for her," he says.