Akshay Kumar has started shooting for Samuk, and the film’s technical credits alone suggest this isn’t a standard Akshay actioner. Producer Vipul Amrutlal Shah, reuniting with the actor 13 years after Namastey London, has brought in Alec Gillis — the creature-effects designer behind the Alien and Predator franchises and Alien: Romulus — to design the film’s central alien. British action director Luke Tumber has also joined to stage the survival sequences.
Neither Shah nor Akshay has put a number on what Samuk will cost, and MovieFees.in isn’t in the business of guessing exact figures. But the scale of talent attached gives a reasonable sense of where this project sits financially.
Akshay currently commands between ₹60 crore and ₹135 crore per film, depending on scale and whether he takes a fixed fee or a profit-sharing structure — he’s done both in recent years, forgoing his fee entirely for a backend deal on Welcome To The Jungle, and taking roughly ₹50 crore upfront on Bhooth Bangla. Samuk, with its two-year development runway and an internationally sourced creature-and-action team, doesn’t fit the profile of a cost-controlled film. That kind of specialist Hollywood crew doesn’t come cheap, and integrating a fully designed alien creature into live-action sequences is one of the more expensive things Indian VFX houses currently attempt.
How it compares to Pralay
For context, Ranveer Singh’s Pralay — another VFX-heavy genre film that also went into production this week, built around zombies rather than aliens — carries a reported ₹300 crore budget, largely driven by its effects and international crew. Samuk, while different in genre, shares the same cost drivers: a creature that has to look convincing on a big screen, and technicians flown in specifically for that job.
If Akshay opts for his usual mid-range fee rather than a backend deal, and the production spends anywhere close to what comparable VFX-driven projects have, Samuk could realistically sit well above his typical film’s cost — potentially in the same bracket as Pralay, though nothing has been confirmed. What’s clear is that this marks a genre pivot for Akshay after a run of comedies and patriotic dramas, and producers will be watching closely whether a Hollywood-grade creature can translate into opening-weekend numbers for an Indian theatrical audience in 2027.
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