Puneet Issar & T. L. V. Prasad Movies Together List — 5 Films

The shape of the work

The 1990s account for 80% of everything they made together. The 1990s belonged to Muqaddar; the 2000s to Bhairav. Puneet Issar acted in every film; T. L. V. Prasad directed all of them. Strictly Hindi cinema — they never crossed industries together.

Partnership facts

• Puneet Issar, fresh off playing Duryodhana in the Mahabharat TV series, was the one who brought T. L. V. Prasad into Hindi cinema. Issar convinced Prasad to direct him in Muqaddar (1996) after the two met at a dubbing studio in Mumbai.
• On the set of Sher-E-Hindustan (1997), Issar would rewrite Prasad's Telugu-style action sequences on the spot to fit his own larger-than-life screen presence. Prasad let him do it because he knew Issar understood what a Hindi mass audience wanted better than he did.
• During the shoot of Suraj (1997), Issar and Prasad shared a room in a cheap Ooty lodge for three weeks. They'd stay up late arguing about whether Amitabh Bachchan or Rajinikanth had better screen timing — Prasad always picked Rajini, Issar always picked Big B.
• The fight choreography in Muqaddar (1996) — where Issar takes on six goons with a broken chair — was directly copied by a Bhojpuri film director in 2002 for a Ravi Kishan movie. That director later admitted he'd watched Muqaddar's VHS tape 15 times to study the blocking.
• Puneet Issar once told a trade magazine: 'Prasad saab would shoot a scene in one take and say, "Chalta hai, audience ko action chahiye, dialogue nahi." I had to fight him to get even two lines in Suraj.'