Aishwarya Lekshmi joins Vishnu Vishal for Gatta Kusthi; the sports drama goes on floors today

It was announced yesterday that Vishnu Vishal is playing the lead in bilingual flick Gatta Kusthi (Matti Kusthi in Telugu), a sports drama based on wrestling competition as its backdrop. The actor is bankrolling the project under Vishnu Vishal Studioz, along with Ravi Teja's RT Team Works.

The makers have now announced that Aishwarya Lekshmi will play the female lead in the movie which has Chella Ayyavu at its helm. Vishnu took to his Twitter page to welcome the Mollywood actress. He tweeted, "Welcome onboard @AishuLekshmi. Hope you hav a blast wid @VVStudioz n @RTTeamWorks (sic)."

He also shared a picture of the actress, director and himself having a close look at the on-camera monitor during the shooting. Aishwarya, who made her Tamil debut with Action, was last seen in Kollywood in the anthology Putham Pudhu Kaalai Vidiyaadhaa which had a direct release on Amazon Prime Video. 

She currently has Mani Ratnam's Ponniyin Selvan and Arya's Captain, too, in Tamil. The team had released a motion poster of the film yesterday in which they announced details of prime crew members. Richard M Nathan is cranking the camera for the project which has gone on floors today. 

Justin Prabhakaran will be composing music for the film which has editing to be handled by Prasanna GK. Umesh J Kumar and Anbariv have been brought on board to helm art direction and stunt sequences respectively. 

Gatta Kusthi is Vishnu's third movie which is based on sports after the successful Vennila Kabadi Kuzhu (streaming on MX Player and Jio Cinema) and critically acclaimed Jeeva (streaming on Disney+ Hotstar). The former was a rural drama with a kabaddi backdrop while the latter revolved around cricket.