Kalki 2898 AD director Nag Ashwin reveals he went into depression after watching Christopher Nolan's Inception: 'It affected me so...'

After making two critically acclaimed films Yevade Subramanyam and Mahanati, Nag Ashwin gained enormous fame after directing the 2024 epic mythological science-fiction action drama Kalki 2898 AD. The film starred a solid ensemble consisting of Prabhas, Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, and Kamal Haasan in the leading roles, with Dulquer Salmaan, Mrunal Thakur, Vijay Deverakonda, and the two filmmakers SS Rajamouli and Ram Gopal Varma making cameo appearances. Made in a massive budget of Rs 600 crore, Kalki 2898 AD went on to become a blockbuster and grossed Rs 1050 crore worldwide and became the second highest-grossing Indian film of 2024 behind Sukumar's Pushpa 2: The Rule, headlined by Allu Arjun, Rashmika Mandanna, and Fahadh Faasil.

Nag Ashwin recently interacted with the college students at the B.V. Raju Institute of Technology in Narsapur, Telangana. In the video shared on Gulte.com, when the journalist asked him before opening the session for the audience, "In this age, when people are consuming everything, how hard it is to come up with an original thought?", the director replied, "I think it happens to a lot of us. You will write something and then, you will see a trailer with the same idea or a film with the same concept." 

When the Kalki 2898 AD director was further asked, "Which one resembled an idea that you had?", he shared, "I had not the same idea but something very similar to Inception. It was something in 2007 or 2008, but I was writing about memories and that film was about dreams. But, once I saw the trailer, I dropped the idea. It affected me so deeply that I went to depression for a week." 

The filmmaker then stressed that it's important to be authentic than original in today's times as he explained, "That happens but what I realised it originality is something you can't control and there's no point chasing it. It's more important to be authentic than original. You can make a beautiful original film that nobody has seen but if you are not authentic, nobody will connect to it. But, you can make the same love story that you have seen 10,000 times, but if you're authentic about it, you will still feel for that story and those characters."

#NagAshwin: “I had an idea similar to Inception”

Full interaction: https://t.co/46kGqBHqTN pic.twitter.com/worM93XUDU

— Gulte (@GulteOfficial) April 15, 2025

Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, the 2010 science fiction heist film Inception revolved around Leonardo DiCaprio as a professional thief who steals secrets by infiltrating the subconsious of his targets through a dream-sharing technology. Considered a modern classic, the film became a global blockbuster. Inception also starred  Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Dileep Rao, Ken Watanabe, and Michael Caine.

READ | Christopher Nolan films ranked from best to worst: Oppenheimer, Inception, Interstellar, The Dark Knight