Karthik Subbaraj is an Indian film director who is popularly known for his debut movie, Pizza (2012), which was a box office hit. He has also directed the critically acclaimed movie Jigarthanda, released in 2014.
Early Life
Karthik completed his schooling from the SBOA Matriculation and Higher Secondary School, which is in Madurai, and later studied Mechatronics at the Thiagarajar College of Engineering. Karthik`s father Gararaj is an actor and has appeared in supporting characters in movies such as Onaayum Aattukuttiyum and Mundasupati. While Karthik was in college he performed at many stage shows.
Movie Career
Karthik first directed a short film titled Kaatchipizhai for Kalainagar TV`s television show, Naalaya Iyakunar. He made his commercial directorial debut with the 2012 thriller movie, Pizza, starring Vijay Sethupati and Remya Nambeesan. The low budget movie went on to become a super hit and was dubbed in Telugu as Pizza, and remade in Kannada as Whistle and in Hindi as Pizza in 3d. With the movie Pizza, Karthik introduced the 7.1 surround sound feature in Tamil cinema.
In 2014, Karthik directed the movie Jigarthanda, a Tamil black-comedy-musical gangster film, which stars Siddharth, Bobby Simha, and Lakshmi Menon. The movie received positive commercial and critical acclaim with many critics praising the film`s script, music, and cinematography, while Tamil cinema legend Mani Ratnam also appreciated the movie. Deemed as one of the most technically sound films of Tamil cinema, the movie grossed INR 35 crore against the budget of an INR 10 crore. It was later revealed that Karthik had written the story for Jigarthanda before he came up with Pizza. However, due to budget constraints, Jigarthanda could not be made earlier and Karthik came up with the story of Pizza. Karthik later directed one of the stories in an anthology Tamil film, Bench Talkies - The First Bench, released in 2015.
Karthik`s third commercial movie as a director, Iraivi, a romantic drama that portrays how society handles women, released in June 2016 and received positive reviews at the box office. In 2018, Karthik helmed the experimental horror thriller Mercury, which starred Prabhu Deva in the lead role. The film was unique owing to the fact that it didn`t have any dialogues. Mercury received mixed to positive reviews upon its release, and fared reasonably well at the box office.
In 2019, Karthik directed the Rajinikanth starrer Petta, which featured an ensemble cast including Vijay Sethupathi, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Simran Bagga, Trisha Krishnan, Bobby Simha and M. Sasikumar. The movie hit the screens in the Pongal season.