The interval block in Kalki 2898 AD has been picked by many fans as one of the most powerful moments of the film. In the scene, Deepika Padukone's pregnant Sumathi walks through a tunnel braving the fire around her. Now Nag Ashwin has shared, in an interview with India Today, that he considers the scene as his ‘most favourite’ and recalled how it was shot in a hurry.
Talking about the fire sequence, Nag said: "That is one of my favourite scenes; I think maybe the most favourite scene. But the way we shot was so hurried. We were shooting three setups that day and Deepika had to leave by a certain flight. It usually happens that some of the most important or magical things in the film happen by chance or in a hurry. And this is what that was. And, but just watching it in that hurry, in that rush and everything, when you just reach the monitor and you see Deepika walking through that particular tunnel in that fire, I just knew this was going to be special.”
He went on to add, “It was a sort of leap of faith. It was the sort of walking and surrendering to a larger power at play. It was the reference of the birth of Krishna. And it was how there was a leap of faith taken by Vasudeva. It was all of that… Deepika is a super-smart actor. You just need to give her little and she knows what the brief is. I genuinely thought that the final pose that she holds at the end of that tunnel, when the interval is about to happen, felt like such a strong visual for me.”
Nag Ashwin’s film made ₹95.3 crore on its opening day, and went on to collect ₹414.25 crore in India in its first week. In the film, Prabhas plays a bounty hunter called Bhairava from Kashi, and Deepika plays a pregnant test subject called SU-M80, while Amitabh plays Ashwatthama from Indian mythology.