Pawan Kalyan's villain to fight Balakrishna

Nandamuri Balakrishna is building an interesting line-up post 'Akhanda'. He collaborated with mainstream mass film-maker Gopichand Malineni for 'Veera Simha Reddy' and also opted to join hands with Anil Ravipudi, not for a comedy entertainer, but for an action thriller.

According to our sources, Balakrishna - Anil film shall be a crime thriller which is loosely based on the Hollywood blockbuster 'Taken'. The film stars Liam Neeson in the lead role and shall be on the background of Mafia & human trafficking.

This is actually a very new step for Balakrishna as he never did thrillers in many numbers. His last political thriller was 'Srimannarayana', which was a decade ago! He always chooses to opt for heavy action drama, his strong ally. Now that he is on board, the makers are going full-on throttle regarding the cast & technical crew. As per our sources, the makers have approached Arjun Rampal for the antagonist role. Previously he was in talks for Pawan Kalyan's 'Hari Hara Veera Mallu' but was replaced.

It is reported that Arjun Rampal showed a green signal after a brief narration from Anil.