‘Thillalangadi’ goes places
The story was told in Telugu at first as ‘Kick’. It was then retold in Tamil as ‘Thillalangadi’. And now, the racy entertainer is all set to speak in Hindi, thanks to ace Bollywood producer Sajid Nadiadwala.
It is said that Sajid, who has made films like ‘Judwa’, ‘Kambhakkt Ishq’ and ‘Mujhse Shaadi Karogi’, will remake the south Indian film with Salman Khan replacing Ravi Teja and ‘Jayam’ Ravi.
“Sajid Nadiadwala watched both the Tamil and Telugu versions recently. He liked the script and the way it was narrated. He immediately decided to take the film to Bollywood,” say sources in the know.
They add: “Sonkashi Sinha, who is acting opposite Salman in his forthcoming ‘Dabangg’, will be his co-star in Thillalangadi remake too. She is expected to recreate the magic of Ileana and Tamannah, the heroines of Telugu and Tamil versions respectively.”
It is said that Sajid, who has made films like ‘Judwa’, ‘Kambhakkt Ishq’ and ‘Mujhse Shaadi Karogi’, will remake the south Indian film with Salman Khan replacing Ravi Teja and ‘Jayam’ Ravi.
“Sajid Nadiadwala watched both the Tamil and Telugu versions recently. He liked the script and the way it was narrated. He immediately decided to take the film to Bollywood,” say sources in the know.
They add: “Sonkashi Sinha, who is acting opposite Salman in his forthcoming ‘Dabangg’, will be his co-star in Thillalangadi remake too. She is expected to recreate the magic of Ileana and Tamannah, the heroines of Telugu and Tamil versions respectively.”
Endhiran - Stylish Robot
So all eyes and are waiting for ‘Endhiran’ the movie and the ears have already got its fodder in the ‘Endhiran’ music that was released on July 31. This Shankar's futuristic film ‘Endhiran: The Robot’ will be a real science-fiction in Tamil after many decades. It is also going to be the biggest Tamil film ever made not just in terms of the money spent on production but also on the line up cast and crew assembled for the film. It stars Rajinikanth and Aishwarya Rai in the lead roles. Other major stars in the film include Danny Denzongpa, Santhanam and Kalabavan Mani. The film is a trilingual having Tamil, Telugu and Hindi versions.
Rajini plays dual roles in ‘Endhiran’. One is a scientist Vaseegaran and the other is a Robot called Chitti. The scientist Rajini creates an android man with artificial intelligence – like that of sixth sense in humans – which looks exactly like him and behaves too like a human to help mankind. But the robot later acquires more human characters. He through technical upgrades and becomes almost human. It falls in love with Aishwarya Rai and writes romantic poems besides doing many other things. Knowing about the extra ordinary intelligence of the Robot the villains lead by Danny Denzongpa try to get control of the Robot. Scientist Rajini then fights to save the Robot falling into the hands of the enemies and destroys the evil forces using the Robot itself.
‘Endhiran’ was a dream of director Shankar. After the stupendous success of ‘Sivaji’ in 2007, Shankar decided to go ahead with the project. The story was developed by Sujatha. He was the one who wrote the finest sci-fi novel ‘En Iniya Iyanthira’. He must have been inspired a lot by the Issac Asimov’s robot story ‘Bicentennial Man’ published in 1975.
If the Tamil film is going to be the biggest ever film who else but the Super Star fit to head the film? The Super Star was signed. For the heroine Aishwarya Rai, Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone were considered and Ash was finalized. For the main villain Telugu star Chakravarthi was first considered and later the Bollywood legend Danny Denzongpa was signed. All most all the biggest names in Indian cinema were tossed up to do at least a character.
In January 2008 ‘Endhiran’ was announced to be produced by Ayngaran International along with Eros Labs. The film was growing and the budget was escalating. At one point the international production companies wanted to leave the project and Sun Pictures came to the rescue. In 2009 ‘Endhiran’ was officially taken over by Sun Pictures.
After Sun Pictures took over, the 200-crore film progressed fast and got completed in July 2010. The first schedule of ‘Endhiran’ commenced with the filming of “Kilimanajro” song featuring Rajinikanth and Aishwarya Rai at the historic location of the Machu Picchu in Peru. The final schedule was fittingly wrapped up at the Sun Studios in Chennai.
The technical crew of ‘Endhiran’ is hand picked by Shankar from all over the world comprising the best of the world.
The script is by late Sujatha, Shankar and Balakumaran. Yuen Woo Ping who designed action scenes for films like The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Forbidden Kingdom is the stunt co-co-ordinator for ‘Endhiran’. Also our own Peter Hein has done a great job.
Stan Winston Studios which handled visual effects for iconic films like Aliens, Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park took care of the animatronics in the film. Shankar has used animatronics technology, seen in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park trilogy for ‘Endhiran’.
The spectacular effects are made real by the superior combination lighting cinematography of Rathnavelu. Editing is by Anthony and the dance choreography for ‘Endhiran’ is by Raju Sundaram and Claudia Bruckmann.
Industrial Light & Magic that handled the special effects for films like Avatar, Star Wars, and Titanic worked on visual and special effects. Buzz says about 40 per cent of the budget was spent on the special effects.
And for the music there is no comparison. The audio of ‘Endhiran’ was officially released on July 31. The best thing about the songs of ‘Endhiran’ is that they are A Rajini Rahman numbers. In his earlier films for Rajini ARR stayed away from his style of music and blended with the Super Star image more. But in ‘Endhiran’ both high values are independent yet complementing each other.
With ‘Endhiran’, Kalanidhi Maran and Hansraj Saxena of Sun Pictures are debuting as official producers. Sun Pictures has tied up with the reputed international distributors HBO to release ‘Endhiran’ with English subtitles in the West. ‘Endhiran’ is expected to hit world screens with nearly 1500 prints in three languages. In the process for the first time China will screen a Rajini film.
Come September, there’s no territory left untouched by the magnetism of Super Stat Rajinikath. With stunning film like ‘Endhiran’, Kollywood is surely all set to make a mark in world cinema.
Rajini plays dual roles in ‘Endhiran’. One is a scientist Vaseegaran and the other is a Robot called Chitti. The scientist Rajini creates an android man with artificial intelligence – like that of sixth sense in humans – which looks exactly like him and behaves too like a human to help mankind. But the robot later acquires more human characters. He through technical upgrades and becomes almost human. It falls in love with Aishwarya Rai and writes romantic poems besides doing many other things. Knowing about the extra ordinary intelligence of the Robot the villains lead by Danny Denzongpa try to get control of the Robot. Scientist Rajini then fights to save the Robot falling into the hands of the enemies and destroys the evil forces using the Robot itself.
‘Endhiran’ was a dream of director Shankar. After the stupendous success of ‘Sivaji’ in 2007, Shankar decided to go ahead with the project. The story was developed by Sujatha. He was the one who wrote the finest sci-fi novel ‘En Iniya Iyanthira’. He must have been inspired a lot by the Issac Asimov’s robot story ‘Bicentennial Man’ published in 1975.
If the Tamil film is going to be the biggest ever film who else but the Super Star fit to head the film? The Super Star was signed. For the heroine Aishwarya Rai, Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone were considered and Ash was finalized. For the main villain Telugu star Chakravarthi was first considered and later the Bollywood legend Danny Denzongpa was signed. All most all the biggest names in Indian cinema were tossed up to do at least a character.
In January 2008 ‘Endhiran’ was announced to be produced by Ayngaran International along with Eros Labs. The film was growing and the budget was escalating. At one point the international production companies wanted to leave the project and Sun Pictures came to the rescue. In 2009 ‘Endhiran’ was officially taken over by Sun Pictures.
After Sun Pictures took over, the 200-crore film progressed fast and got completed in July 2010. The first schedule of ‘Endhiran’ commenced with the filming of “Kilimanajro” song featuring Rajinikanth and Aishwarya Rai at the historic location of the Machu Picchu in Peru. The final schedule was fittingly wrapped up at the Sun Studios in Chennai.
The technical crew of ‘Endhiran’ is hand picked by Shankar from all over the world comprising the best of the world.
The script is by late Sujatha, Shankar and Balakumaran. Yuen Woo Ping who designed action scenes for films like The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Forbidden Kingdom is the stunt co-co-ordinator for ‘Endhiran’. Also our own Peter Hein has done a great job.
Stan Winston Studios which handled visual effects for iconic films like Aliens, Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park took care of the animatronics in the film. Shankar has used animatronics technology, seen in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park trilogy for ‘Endhiran’.
The spectacular effects are made real by the superior combination lighting cinematography of Rathnavelu. Editing is by Anthony and the dance choreography for ‘Endhiran’ is by Raju Sundaram and Claudia Bruckmann.
Industrial Light & Magic that handled the special effects for films like Avatar, Star Wars, and Titanic worked on visual and special effects. Buzz says about 40 per cent of the budget was spent on the special effects.
And for the music there is no comparison. The audio of ‘Endhiran’ was officially released on July 31. The best thing about the songs of ‘Endhiran’ is that they are A Rajini Rahman numbers. In his earlier films for Rajini ARR stayed away from his style of music and blended with the Super Star image more. But in ‘Endhiran’ both high values are independent yet complementing each other.
With ‘Endhiran’, Kalanidhi Maran and Hansraj Saxena of Sun Pictures are debuting as official producers. Sun Pictures has tied up with the reputed international distributors HBO to release ‘Endhiran’ with English subtitles in the West. ‘Endhiran’ is expected to hit world screens with nearly 1500 prints in three languages. In the process for the first time China will screen a Rajini film.
Come September, there’s no territory left untouched by the magnetism of Super Stat Rajinikath. With stunning film like ‘Endhiran’, Kollywood is surely all set to make a mark in world cinema.
Boss Engira Baskaran - Middle class romantic comedy
‘Boss Engira Baskaran’ is a forthcoming film of Red Giant Movies. The film was actually started by Vasan Visual Ventures that produced Bala’s national award winning film ‘Naan Kadavil’. Later actor Arya undertook the film under his home banner ‘The Show People’ even as the film was under production. But in the end ‘Boss Engira Baskaran’ was lapped up in total by Udhayanidhi Stalin of Red Giant Movies.
Rajesh. M of the cute romantic comedy ‘Siva Manasula Sakthi’ is the director of this film. While ‘Siva Manasula Sakthi’ was a city based romance director Rajesh has made his second film a romantic comedy happening mostly in a country back drop, although it travels to city in some parts.
The story is about an ever obliging guy Baskaran (Arya) who is always busy doing odd jobs for other people. In the process he misses a lot of his personal life and doesn’t seem to embark on a useful career. When things almost go out of hand, a no-nonsense young girl Chandrika (Nayantara) enters his life and puts him on right track. A middle class love also blooms on the way.
‘Boss Engira Baskaran’ was launched in November 2009 and finished the entire shooting in August 2010. The film was largely shot in locations like Thanjavur, Mysore and Trichy. A major portion was also film in Kumbakonam and a few in Chennai as well. While for the story they remained in and around Tamil Nadu, Rajesh and his team went to Switzerland for the songs. True to Tamil film culture.
The lead artistes’ words “There was not a single moment when we were stressed out,” that vouch for the clean entertainer. Santhanam plays a friend of Arya and that also ensures good comedy in the film.
Music of the film is scored by Yuvan Shankar Raja who gave some great songs in ‘Siva Manasula Sakthi’ with the help of words from Na. Muthukumar. Remember the song ‘Oru kal, oru kannadi udaiyamal modhikondal kadhal’? The same musician-lyricist-director combo is working magic in this film too. The film has five songs.
Yuvan Shankar Raja is composing the musical score of ‘Boss Engira Baskaran’, too. The film has 5 songs all written by Na. Muthukumar.
Other credits for the film are; Cinematographer Sakthi Saravanan, Art Jacki, Editing Vivekharshan, Choreography Dhinesh, Stunt Rajasekar, Costume Designer Nalini Sriram (Nayantara) and Dheepali (Arya).
‘Boss Engira Baskaran’ is looking for a September release.
Rajesh. M of the cute romantic comedy ‘Siva Manasula Sakthi’ is the director of this film. While ‘Siva Manasula Sakthi’ was a city based romance director Rajesh has made his second film a romantic comedy happening mostly in a country back drop, although it travels to city in some parts.
The story is about an ever obliging guy Baskaran (Arya) who is always busy doing odd jobs for other people. In the process he misses a lot of his personal life and doesn’t seem to embark on a useful career. When things almost go out of hand, a no-nonsense young girl Chandrika (Nayantara) enters his life and puts him on right track. A middle class love also blooms on the way.
‘Boss Engira Baskaran’ was launched in November 2009 and finished the entire shooting in August 2010. The film was largely shot in locations like Thanjavur, Mysore and Trichy. A major portion was also film in Kumbakonam and a few in Chennai as well. While for the story they remained in and around Tamil Nadu, Rajesh and his team went to Switzerland for the songs. True to Tamil film culture.
The lead artistes’ words “There was not a single moment when we were stressed out,” that vouch for the clean entertainer. Santhanam plays a friend of Arya and that also ensures good comedy in the film.
Music of the film is scored by Yuvan Shankar Raja who gave some great songs in ‘Siva Manasula Sakthi’ with the help of words from Na. Muthukumar. Remember the song ‘Oru kal, oru kannadi udaiyamal modhikondal kadhal’? The same musician-lyricist-director combo is working magic in this film too. The film has five songs.
Yuvan Shankar Raja is composing the musical score of ‘Boss Engira Baskaran’, too. The film has 5 songs all written by Na. Muthukumar.
Other credits for the film are; Cinematographer Sakthi Saravanan, Art Jacki, Editing Vivekharshan, Choreography Dhinesh, Stunt Rajasekar, Costume Designer Nalini Sriram (Nayantara) and Dheepali (Arya).
‘Boss Engira Baskaran’ is looking for a September release.
Velayudham - Saviour at work
Remakes have always been safe bets for Vijay and director M Raja. With the former having a track record of films like ‘Kadhalukku Mariyadhai’, ‘Ninaithen Vandhai’, ‘Priyamanavale’ and ‘Pokkiri’, the latter has carved a niche for himself doing remakes from ‘Jayam’ to ‘Santosh Subramaniam’.
And now, both have come together for ‘Velayudham’, which too is said to be a remake of a Telugu hit, titled ‘Aazad’. Produced by Aascar V Ravichandran, the film that was launched amidst much fanfare has two heroines- Genelia and Hansika Motwani.
Says Raja, “This is my first film with a big actor like Vijay. He suits to the role well. The movie is about an ordinary youngster who transforms as a catalyst to reform the society. I am hopeful ‘Velayudham’ will work big time with the audience.”
“Vijay plays an enterprising youngster while Genelia is doing the role of a journalist,” the director says and adds: “Hansika Motwani and Saranya Mohan are also doing crucial characters. Comedy will be taken care of by Santhanam and Sathyan.”
The plot is interesting. Genelia reports that a superhero is saving the city and circumstances lead Vijay to accidentally save the city from the impostors, making him the accidental superhero!
Vijay’s costumes in the movie seem to be inspired from a popular game title. Though nothing is known how long he’d be wearing the costumes, the first look given by the makers suggest Vijay’s up to something big!
Saying Priyan’s cinematography will be a highlight and Vijay Antony has come out with catchy songs, Raja continues: “On the whole, ‘Velayudham’ will be a wholesome treat to not just Vijay fans, but for every movie-goer.”
On his part, Vijay says, “Working for a big banner like Aascar gives me immense proud. Raja is known for his knack to deliver blockbusters without a break. ‘Velayudham’ is a nice story. Hopefully our combination should rock.”
And now, both have come together for ‘Velayudham’, which too is said to be a remake of a Telugu hit, titled ‘Aazad’. Produced by Aascar V Ravichandran, the film that was launched amidst much fanfare has two heroines- Genelia and Hansika Motwani.
Says Raja, “This is my first film with a big actor like Vijay. He suits to the role well. The movie is about an ordinary youngster who transforms as a catalyst to reform the society. I am hopeful ‘Velayudham’ will work big time with the audience.”
“Vijay plays an enterprising youngster while Genelia is doing the role of a journalist,” the director says and adds: “Hansika Motwani and Saranya Mohan are also doing crucial characters. Comedy will be taken care of by Santhanam and Sathyan.”
The plot is interesting. Genelia reports that a superhero is saving the city and circumstances lead Vijay to accidentally save the city from the impostors, making him the accidental superhero!
Vijay’s costumes in the movie seem to be inspired from a popular game title. Though nothing is known how long he’d be wearing the costumes, the first look given by the makers suggest Vijay’s up to something big!
Saying Priyan’s cinematography will be a highlight and Vijay Antony has come out with catchy songs, Raja continues: “On the whole, ‘Velayudham’ will be a wholesome treat to not just Vijay fans, but for every movie-goer.”
On his part, Vijay says, “Working for a big banner like Aascar gives me immense proud. Raja is known for his knack to deliver blockbusters without a break. ‘Velayudham’ is a nice story. Hopefully our combination should rock.”
7am Arivu - Intelligents, Intelligence
A mega success in 'Ghajini' has brought together again the triumphant trio- director A R Murugadoss, actor Suriya and music composer Harris Jayaraj.
Joining hands this time with them for the film titled '7am Arivu' is Udhayanidhi Stalin, who will produce the movie under his Red Giant Movies banner. Shruthi Haasan, daughter of ace actor Kamal Haasan, has been roped in as the heroine.
Sources say the movie is about artificial intelligence and Suriya plays a never-before role in it. Confirming this, Murugadoss says, "that the film has a unique script and will showcase something that has never been attempted before. It will be one of Suriya’s most challenging roles in his career."
Describing ‘7am Arivu’ the next level in his acting career, Suriya said, “Murugadoss has worked on the script for about a year. The film is being produced in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. I am happy to join hands with Udhayanidhi after ‘Aadhavan’.”
On his part, Harris says, "I have a greater responsibility for I have to live up to ‘Ghajini’ expectations. The movie will have catchy songs and music lovers would love it. Efforts are on to have Shruthi sing a song."
Joining hands this time with them for the film titled '7am Arivu' is Udhayanidhi Stalin, who will produce the movie under his Red Giant Movies banner. Shruthi Haasan, daughter of ace actor Kamal Haasan, has been roped in as the heroine.
Sources say the movie is about artificial intelligence and Suriya plays a never-before role in it. Confirming this, Murugadoss says, "that the film has a unique script and will showcase something that has never been attempted before. It will be one of Suriya’s most challenging roles in his career."
Describing ‘7am Arivu’ the next level in his acting career, Suriya said, “Murugadoss has worked on the script for about a year. The film is being produced in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. I am happy to join hands with Udhayanidhi after ‘Aadhavan’.”
On his part, Harris says, "I have a greater responsibility for I have to live up to ‘Ghajini’ expectations. The movie will have catchy songs and music lovers would love it. Efforts are on to have Shruthi sing a song."
