Game Changer, starring Ram Charan and marking Bollywood actor Kiara Advani’s debut in Telugu cinema, proved to be a box office dud and received negative reviews from both critics and audiences alike. Now, the film’s editor, Shameer Muhammed, has opened up about his experience working on the project. Shameer described working with director Shankar as a “terrible” experience.
In a recent interview with Kaumudy Movies, Shameer shared that he spent an entire year editing the film and managed to reduce its runtime to 2 hours and 50 minutes. He said, “I spent a year with that film. I went there for three years. It was in the last six months that I was told I would have to stay with them for another month. I had a sketch here, so I came at that time. When I was editing, the film was 7–7.5 hours long. I made it three and a half hours. After that, a new editor came in and shortened it to 2.5–3 hours.”
However, Shameer Muhammed revealed that it was filmmaker Shankar’s lack of professionalism that led him to exit the project. He had already turned down several other offers to focus on Game Changer. He said, “It was a terrible experience working with Shankar for me. I went there with great excitement, but things were happening in some other world there. He would fix one date for editing, but he would turn up only after ten days. The same pattern continued for several days, and I ended up staying in Chennai for 300–350 days.”
Shameer shared that another editor, Ruben, took over the project after he stepped away. He explained that since he had already missed out on other opportunities while working on Game Changer, he did not want to lose out on films like Marco and Ajayante Randam Moshanam. Shameer added, “Then I left the film. It would have been a terrible mistake if I had left AR and Marco for Game Changer.”
Game Changer minted Rs 186.25 crore worldwide against a reported budget of Rs 450 crore.
