What do Akshay Kumar’s Samuk, Marvel’s Avengers: Doomsday and the Oscars have in common? The answer lies not in the stars, but in the technicians building the worlds behind them. Samuk, Akshay Kumar’s upcoming alien thriller directed by Kanishk Varma, has added Chris Peters to its international technical team. Peters has worked as an art director on Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Doomsday and has also been associated with large scale productions including Jurassic World: Dominion and the Wicked franchise. He is now bringing that experience to a Hindi film that is attempting to create an elaborate alien world of its own.
But Peters is only one part of what makes Samuk’s technical crew noteworthy. The film has also brought on Alec Gillis, the creature effects designer whose work on Alien 3 earned him an Academy Award nomination for visual effects. Gillis is designing the central alien for Samuk, giving the film a direct connection to the kind of practical creature work that helped define Hollywood science fiction.
British action specialist Luke Tumber is also part of the team. His credits include major international productions such as Mission: Impossible, Venom, No Time to Die and Star Wars, adding another layer of international action expertise to the project.
At a time when Indian films often announce scale through star cast, locations and visual effects budgets, Samuk appears to be building its scale from the craft departments upwards. Production design, creature effects and action are being handled by technicians who have spent years working on some of the world’s biggest genre productions.
#AkshayKumar’s alien thriller #Samuk has added #AvengersDoomsday art director Chris Peters to its international technical crew 🤯🔥
— $@M (@SAMTHEBESTEST_) September 2, 2026
The film is being shot in Cardiff and also features Oscar-nominated creature designer #AlecGillis👌
“Samuk is being mounted on a big scale.… pic.twitter.com/VXXFMwNrKg
The choice is particularly relevant for an alien thriller. Unlike a conventional action film, Samuk has to create a world and a creature that audiences are willing to believe in. The makers have described the film as a combination of military realism, survival horror and alien mythology, with the production currently taking place in the UK.
That makes the connection with Avengers: Doomsday and the Oscars more than a publicity hook. Peters represents experience in constructing the physical worlds of large franchise cinema, while Gillis brings an Oscar recognised background in visual effects and creature design. Samuk is effectively borrowing from two different traditions of international genre filmmaking and attempting to put them into a Hindi commercial film.
The bigger question, therefore, is not whether Samuk can look like a Hollywood film. It is whether these international technicians can help the film develop a visual identity of its own. For Indian cinema, that may ultimately be the more significant experiment.
