To be directed by national award-winning director Praveen Sattaru, the film `Pullela Gopichand’ will be the first on an Indian badminton player.
The film is scheduled to go on the floor this November and will be shot across Hyderabad, Lucknow, Bengaluru and Birmingham.
The persona of Gopi – as he is better known within the badminton circuit – is set to get bigger with a Hindi-Telugu biopic being planned on the 2001-All England Badminton champion.
Abhisek Nama, the biopic producer, believes Gopi’s exploits will be as much a hit on celluloid as he had been on the court.
“Gopichand’s life is very filmy, the early struggle, his love story, his mother’s emotion, his injury that almost finished his career and then his win that changed the face of Indian badminton. It is a story waiting to be told,’’ says Nama.
“We have been working on the script for the last 18 months. Gopi has cleared the script. Now with the Olympics performance, the film will have more value,’’ says Nama.
Playing Gopi will be actor Sudheer Babu, a former badminton player himself who used to train with Gopi at the Prakash Padukone academy in Bengaluru in the late 90s.
