Dream it, do it

Namit Malhotra, whose VFX company has won six Oscars, on an animator’s guide to the galaxy

-  ANJULY MATHAI

In 2014, filmmaker Christo pher Nolan approached DNEG, one of Hollywood’s leading VFX companies, with a specific demand: He wanted his viewers to experience a journey through a black hole. There was no scientific evidence for what this would be like, since no one had ever done it. Therefore, Namit Malhotra, chief executive officer of DNEG, consulted with astrophysicist Kip Thorne, who gave a formula for rendering what a black hole would look like when light passed through it. Namit’s R&D, technology and creative teams went to work. They transformed that scientific formula into stunning imagery, the kind the world had never seen before. The resulting film, Interstellar (2014), won DNEG its second Oscar for best visual effects (after Inception in 2011).

“More than winning the Oscar, where it goes two steps beyond is that our work has been published in scientific journals,” says Namit. For a man who started his career with an Apple computer in his father’s Andheri garage, Namit has come a long way. Currently, his company employs 8,000 professionals in 16 cities across four continents. DNEG has won Oscars in the visual effects category for six films—Inception, Interstellar, Ex Machina (2015), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), First Man (2018) and Tenet (2020). It is involved in more than 100 films a year. Just last month, four of its big-budget films released—No Time to Die, Venom 2, Ron’s Gone Wrong and Dune.