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Pizza
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Karthik Subbaraj
Screenplay by	Karthik Subbaraj
Story by	Karthik Subbaraj Prasath Ramar
Produced by	C. V. Kumar
Starring	Vijay Sethupathi Remya Nambeesan
Cinematography	Gopi Amaranath
Edited by	Leo John Paul
Music by	Santhosh Narayanan
Production company	Thirukumaran Entertainment
Distributed by	Sangam Cinemas
Release date	19 October 2012 (2012-10-19)
Running time	128 minutes
Country	India
Language	Tamil
Budget	₹1.5 crore
Box office	est. ₹8 crore

Pizza is a 2012 Indian Tamil-language horror thriller film written and directed by Karthik Subbaraj. The film stars Vijay Sethupathi and Remya Nambeesan, with Aadukalam Naren, Karunakaran, Jayakumar, Pooja Ramachandran, and Bobby Simha in supporting roles. The story is about how a pizza delivery man lands in a mysterious predicament, and how it affects his life.

Pizza is the directorial debut of Karthik. The film, produced by C. V. Kumar under Thirukumaran Entertainment, was distributed by Sangam Cinemas. Featuring music composed by Santhosh Narayanan, cinematography by Gopi Amarnath and editing by Leo John Paul, it was the first Tamil film to feature 7.1 surround sound. Pizza was released on 19 October 2012 to critical acclaim and commercial success, grossing ₹8 crores against a budget of ₹1.5 crores.

Pizza was the first instalment in the film series, and was followed by two spiritual successors. It was remade in Kannada as Whistle (2013), in Hindi under the same title (2014), and in Bengali as Golpo Holeo Shotti (2014).

Plot

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Michael Karthikeyan is a pizza delivery man who lives with his girlfriend Anu, an aspiring novelist. Michael does not believe in the supernatural but is afraid of anything paranormal. Anu keeps telling him that he will soon realise the presence of supernatural beings. At first, Michael is confused and scared, and his fears are confirmed when he discovers that a spirit has possessed his boss Shanmugam's daughter.

Meanwhile, Anu becomes pregnant, and they get married. One day, Michael goes to deliver a pizza and returns to the restaurant covered in blood; he keeps muttering Anu's name. When his boss questions him, Michael explains that he had been to deliver a pizza to a customer named Smitha in a bungalow and recounts the events he encountered there.

Smitha requests that Michael wait downstairs while she goes upstairs to get money for the pizza. Almost immediately, the power goes out. While waiting downstairs, Michael hears a loud noise from upstairs. Going upstairs to investigate, he finds Smitha murdered and notices a slice of pizza that he had delivered is missing. Horrified, Michael dashes to the door, only to realise it is locked from the outside.

Then the murdered woman's husband, Bobby, arrives, and he believes that his wife is having an affair. Through his cell phone, Michael communicates with Bobby and explains his situation, instigating Bobby to aid him in getting out of the house. Bobby suddenly disappears from the front entrance and is found inside the house, murdered in the same room as his wife, with two slices of pizza now missing. Michael encounters the couple's child, "Nithya," identical to the spirit's name, allegedly possessing the boss's daughter.

Michael tries everything to get out of the house. He manages to contact Anu using the phone and gets her to contact the local police. When a couple of officers arrive at the bungalow, they reveal that four people died in that house: Smitha, Bobby, their young daughter, and a girl named Anu. The police disclose that Michael is a suspect and attempt to arrest him. Confused, Michael does not believe them and attempts to escape.

Michael then sees the police officers getting dragged into the house and killed. Michael, in a horrified state, runs back to the restaurant. While Michael is unconvinced that Anu is dead, his friends at the restaurant start realising they have never seen Anu. They also notice that Michael's home does not have any evidence that he lived with Anu. Michael continues his search for Anu.

As Michael stops and calls Anu during a delivery, the true story of what happened is shown. The Income Tax Department had planned a raid on Shanmugam's house. Shanmugam, who has diamonds worth around 20 million hidden in his restaurant, hides them in a candy box and asks Michael to deliver them to his house. But Michael has a bike accident and sees the hidden diamonds. Michael and Anu decide to steal the diamonds. So, they concoct a story in which Michael convincingly "forgets" the pizza bag at the "haunted" bungalow. Meanwhile, Anu has left for Kochi via Bangalore with the diamonds, and they plan to settle abroad.

After the phone call, Michael goes to deliver a pizza to a house and encounters a series of events similar to the story he had narrated. Inside, he meets a girl identical to the "Nithya" described in his tale. Michael is locked inside the home with "Nithya" curiously looking at him. The lights then go out.

Cast

• Vijay Sethupathi as Michael Karthikeyan
• Remya Nambeesan as Anu
• Aadukalam Naren as Shanmugam
• Jayakumar as the chef
• Karunakaran as Raghavan
• Simha as Bobby
• Pooja Ramachandran as Smitha
• Veera Santhanam as an exorcist
• Gajaraj as a police officer
• Venkatesh as a police officer
• Rekha Suresh as Shanmugam's wife
• Nalan Kumarasamy as Michael's friend (uncredited role)
• Kavin as Ghost researcher (uncredited role)

Production

The short film director Karthik Subbaraj intended for Jigarthanda to be his feature debut; unable to obtain financing as he was untested in directing big budget films, he instead decided to make the much lower budget Pizza. Originally, a story taking place predominantly within a house was planned; after the idea of including a pizza delivery man stuck in the house occurred to Karthik, he completed the script in 20 days. C. V. Kumar, who previously declined to finance Jigarthanda, agreed to produce Pizza because of its lower budget. Vijay Sethupathi, when asked how he was cast in the lead role, replied, "I used to regularly leave my photographs in the film institute. I got to work with Karthik Subburaj in many of his short films and then he approached me for Pizza". Remya Nambeesan accepted to do the film after being impressed by Karthik's narration. After playing a rural character in Kullanari Koottam (2011), she was excited to portray a contrastingly modern and urban character. Pizza is the first Tamil film to feature 7.1 surround sound. Karthik has stated that some distributors wanted the climax changed as they were not impressed with the change in genre it depicted, but he refused as he considered it the film's high point.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack album and background score was composed by Santhosh Narayanan. The audio rights for the soundtrack album were purchased by Think Music. The soundtrack album for the film was launched on 6 September 2012, at Sathyam Cinemas, Chennai. Karthik Srinivasan of Milliblog wrote, "Santhosh Narayanan delivers on the promise he showed in Atta Kathi".

Release

Pizza was released on 19 October 2012 by Sangam Cinemas all over Tamil Nadu. The film was released in 300 theatres initially and the number of theatres was increased to 600 after the film's positive response. It collected ₹1.85 crore (equivalent to ₹3.5 crore or US$420,000 in 2023) within two weeks of release, and its final worldwide earnings were roughly ₹8 crore (equivalent to ₹15 crore or US$1.8 million in 2023) against a budget of ₹1.5 crore (equivalent to ₹2.8 crore or US$340,000 in 2023).

Critical reception

N. Venkateswaran from The Times of India gave 4 out of 5 stars and wrote that director Karthik Subburaj displayed a "strong control of the medium and gives abundant display of his narrative skills", going to add: "If he maintains the quality of his menu and future offerings, Karthik is sure to become one of Kollywood's top directors". Sify termed the film as "delicious" and described it as "entertaining and at the same time different in its approach". Malini Mannath from The New Indian Express described Pizza as "offbeat, intriguing and gripping, and nothing like what you've seen on Tamil screen before". Vivek Ramz of in.com rated it 3.5/5 and cited that Pizza was a "well made suspense thriller that keeps you guessing for most parts".

Malathi Rangarajan from The Hindu and Haricharan Pudipeddi from Nowrunning criticised the first half of the film. The former claimed that the second half of Pizza has a "reasonably enjoyable tanginess, but to get to that you have to sit through the protraction of the first" and that "the screenplay doesn't render much help", while the latter concluded that the film displayed "signs of a craftily executed thriller, but falls short of satisfaction due to erratic narration", giving it 2.5 out of 5 stars. J. Hurtado of ScreenAnarchy wrote, "Where Pizza succeeds is that it tells a story on its own terms. There are no unnecessary flourishes designed to sell soundtrack albums, there are remarkably few comedic tangents designed to lighten the mood, and the violence and gore are fairly realistic and don't defy the laws of physics in the search to address the metaphysical".

Accolades

Legacy

The success of Pizza turned Vijay Sethupathi into one of the most sought-after actors in Tamil cinema. Along with Pizza, he scored back-to-back successes with Sundarapandian (which featured him in a negative role) and Naduvula Konjam Pakkatha Kaanom in the same year resulting in a rise in his popularity. Film critic Baradwaj Rangan stated that Sethupathi had become " sort of indie-film star, the first ever in Tamil cinema". The film also established C. V. Kumar as a producer who went on to produce films with innovative themes throughout his career. Pizza and Kadhalil Sodhappuvadhu Yeppadi became trendsetters and sparked a short-lived boom of short filmmakers making their feature debut in Tamil cinema.

Sequels and remakes

A sequel Pizza II: Villa was produced and released the following year by the same production house. The sequel did not carry on with the characters from Pizza, and was a spiritual successor instead. A third film in the series, Pizza 3: The Mummy, was released in 2023. The original film was dubbed in Telugu, remade in Kannada as Whistle (2013), in Hindi under the same title in 2014, and in Bengali as Golpo Holeo Shotti (2014).

References

1. ^ "Direct hits". The New Indian Express. 12 May 2013. p. 1. Archived from the original on 29 June 2013. Retrieved 24 May 2013.
2. "Variety on offer". The Hindu. 19 September 2012. Archived from the original on 2 December 2013. Retrieved 23 September 2012.
3. Naig, Udhav (8 March 2014). "Gangs of Madurai". The Hindu. Archived from the original on 11 September 2023. Retrieved 13 September 2023.
4. Warrier, Shobha (22 January 2013). "'I knew that my film Pizza would entertain people'". Rediff.com. Archived from the original on 13 September 2023. Retrieved 13 September 2023.
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6. "'I was rejected even for the role of a junior artist'". The Times of India. 17 December 2012. Archived from the original on 22 November 2023. Retrieved 22 November 2023.
7. Ramya Nambeesan talks about Pizza — Exclusive (in Tamil). NextGen Entertainments. 7 September 2012. Archived from the original on 23 August 2024. Retrieved 21 March 2024 – via YouTube.
8. "Tamil film 'Pizza' features 7.1 surround sound". News18. 12 October 2012. Archived from the original on 5 September 2023. Retrieved 12 October 2012.
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10. "Audio launch: 'Pizza'". The Times of India. 7 September 2012. Archived from the original on 5 September 2023. Retrieved 20 October 2019.
11. Karthik (6 September 2012). "Pizza (Music review), Tamil – Santhosh Narayanan". Milliblog. Archived from the original on 12 December 2023. Retrieved 29 November 2024.
12. "Pizza to release soon!". The Times of India. 4 October 2012. Archived from the original on 29 November 2024. Retrieved 29 November 2024.
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15. "Pizza". Sify. Archived from the original on 22 March 2013. Retrieved 27 October 2012.
16. Malini, Mannath (23 October 2012). "'Pizza' (Tamil)". The New Indian Express. Archived from the original on 7 April 2013. Retrieved 26 October 2012.
17. Ramz, Vivek (20 October 2012). "Tamil Review:Pizza tastes mostly good". in.com. Archived from the original on 23 October 2012. Retrieved 25 October 2012.
18. Rangarajan, Malathi (20 October 2012). "Pizza: Freshly made". The Hindu. Archived from the original on 30 March 2013. Retrieved 20 October 2012.
19. Pudipeddi, Haricharan. "Pizza Review". Nowrunning. Archived from the original on 24 October 2012. Retrieved 21 October 2012.
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21. "Dhanush, Shruti Haasan win top laurels at SIIMA awards". NDTV. Indo-Asian News Service. 14 September 2013. Archived from the original on 6 September 2023. Retrieved 5 September 2013.
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External links

• Pizza at IMDb 
• Pizza at Rotten Tomatoes

• 2012 films
• 2010s heist films
• 2010s Indian films
• 2010s Tamil-language films
• 2012 directorial debut films
• 2012 horror thriller films
• Fiction with unreliable narrators
• Films directed by Karthik Subbaraj
• Films scored by Santhosh Narayanan
• Indian heist films
• Indian horror thriller films
• Tamil films remade in other languages
• Tamil-language Indian films