Atlee (director)

Atlee
Atlee at the 8th Vijay Awards, 2014
Born	Arun Kumar (1983-09-21) September 21, 1983 (age 33) Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India
Residence	Chennai, Tamil Nadu
Occupation	Film director, screenwriter, producer
Years active	2010 - present
Spouse(s)	Krishna Priya (m. 2014)
Website	Official Page

Atlee (born 21 September 1983 as Arun Kumar) is an Indian film director and screenwriter who works primarily in Tamil cinema. He is best known for his directorial debut Raja Rani (2013), produced by Fox Star Studios, for which he was awarded the Vijay Award for Best Debut Director. He worked as an assistant director under filmmaker S. Shankar for the films Enthiran (2010) and Nanban (2012). His Second film was with Ilayathalapathi Vijay titled as Theri which received positive reviews and became third highest grossing South Indian film of 2016.His third film is again with Vijay and it is 61st film of Vijay, produced by Sri Thenandal Films. Shooting of the film started from 1 February 2017.,

Born in Madurai, Atlee spent all his "growing years" in Chennai. Atlee, aka Arun Kumar, did his Visual Communications at Sathyabhama University. He worked with director Shankar for 5 years, acting as the associate director for massive, landmark films such as Enthiran and Nanban.

He began his career as an assistant director in Enthiran (2010) under director S. Shankar and he continued to work with him in his next project Nanban (2012), a remake of the Hindi film 3 Idiots. In 2013, he made his directional debut through Raja Rani. The film was produced by Fox Star Studios and AR Murugadoss. It was a romantic comedy featuring Arya, Jai, Nayantara, Nazriya Nazim and Sathyaraj. He was appreciated for pulling off a stellar ensemble cast successfully in his very first film. Raja Rani eventually emerged a huge success after earning over 500 million from the South Indian box office within four weeks. It also has won him the Vijay Award for Best Debut Director. Atlee's latest directorial film is Theri, which has an ensemble cast; Vijay, Samantha, Baby Nainika and Amy Jackson has become Second highest grossing Tamil film for the year 2016 grossing Rs. 175 CR and result into most profitable tamil film of the year.