The story of the 500 kg machine gun and 16k bullets that Ranbir Kapoor used in Animal

Ranbir Kapoor’s Animal is wreaking havoc at the box office, raking in Rs 481 crore worldwide in five days. The movie is being praised for its high-octane action sequences and emotional storytelling by director Sandeep Reddy Vanga.

• One of the scenes from Animal that is being talked about is where Ranbir Kapoor uses a 500 kg movable steel machine gun to eliminate his rivals.

If you think that it is a work of Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) or visual effects, then you're wrong. The gun was specifically designed by a team in Bengaluru, and it took four months to finish it.

Four months to finish making the gun

• The machine gun was the brainchild of director Sandeep Reddy Vanga, who got it designed by production designer Suresh Selvarajan.
• Selvarajan remarked that the gun is completely made of steel, and it took four months to finish it. “I never saw such a thing in Indian cinema. It was Sandeep’s vision,” Selvarajan said.
• During the movie promotions in Chennai, Ranbir Kapoor opened up about filming the sequence with the gun.
• The actor lauded the efforts of director Vanga and designer Suresh Selvarajan for bringing out the whole gun sequence.
• Director Ram Gopal Varma also had praise for the machine gun sequence which he spoke about on his X account (formerly Twitter). 

  My REVIEW of ANIMAL
  film https://t.co/zvamzjCFuN

  — Ram Gopal Varma (@RGVzoomin) December 3, 2023

• “One of my favourite moments is when, against everyone’s expectations, including me in the audience was that he will come back with a baseball bat or something, but when he comes back with a machine gun that made us all fall off our chairs and that moment is a pure cinematic gem,” Varma said while praising Sandeep Reddy Vanga for the movie.
• In fact, the machine gun sequence created curiosity after it was shown in the trailer of the movie.

It lived up to the expectations of the fans when the whole 18-minute sequence before the interval, got the people on the edge of their seats, as high-volt action took place.

Took 4-5 days to shoot the scene

• Designer Suresh Selvarajan also revealed that it took nearly 4-5 days to shoot the sequence in which more than 16k dummy bullets were used.
• In an interview with Hindi newspaper Dainik Bhaskar, Selvarajan revealed that it was director Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s vision and he wanted it perfect, so they took a lot of time to film the scene.
• 80-90 welders, carpenters, electricians, and concept designers all worked together to make a 500 kg machine gun and 16k dummy bullets.
• He also mentioned that the design of the gun has been inspired by the interiors of luxury cars like Lamborghini and Jaguar.
• Selvarajan also spilled the beans on golden masks which his team made for assailants who came to eliminate Ranbir Kapoor.
• “We made 400-500 axes along with 700-800 golden masks. The inside of the mask is made of fiber, while the exterior is made up of metal coating,” Selvarajan said.
• Though Selvarajan didn’t speak on the idea of golden masks, it looks inspired from the Netflix series, Squid Game, which also shows characters wearing certain masks.

Animal is turning out to be a gigantic success at the box office, and the efforts of the whole team seem to be seeing the success they wanted.