I tell filmmakers that if you can dream it (storytelling), we can do it'

Earlier this month, visual effects major DNEG, a subsidiary of the ₹4,167 crore Mumbai-based Prime Focus, secured $200 million (about ₹1,669 crore) in funding from Abu Dhabi-based investor United Al Saqer Group (UASG). In a video interview, NAMIT MALHOTRA, founder of Prime Focus and CEO DNEG, talks to Vanita Kohli-Khandekar about the firm's Oscar-winning work in Hollywood, and its role in the recent Indian hits like Kalki and Munjya. Edited excerpts.

- Vanita Kohli-Khandekar

What is Prime Focus's role in the success of Dune, Kalki, or Interstellar?

The DNA of the business is closely tied to the filmmaker's vision. Take Interstellar where the director's (Christopher Nolan's) vision is that we show the world what happens when you travel through time and space through the wormhole. There is no evidence of what that means. There has been no rendition of any imagery of it.

DNEG worked with Theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner Kip Thorne. We worked with his scientific formulae, coding that into various simulations to render something that the scientific journals said was 'as accurate as it gets." The success of Interstellar is a clear rendition of how art has led science, which has never been the case historically. In Dune an equally auteur director, Denis Villeneuve had this magnificent vision of what he wanted to bring to life. Our contribution was aligning with the filmmaker. That is when the film becomes more than a 2-3hour piece of entertainment into something that has lasting impressions in the audience's mind.

At what stage do you get involved?