Kamal Haasan on reviving long-delayed Marudhanayagam: ‘Whole script has to be reworked’

Actor-filmmaker Kamal Haasan has in his maiden Instagram Live session opened up on his ambitious, long-delayed magnum opus Marudhanayagam. Kamal Haasan said that for the film to take off now, the entire script would have to be reworked.

In the Instagram Live session with actor Vijay Sethupathi and VJ Abhishek Raaja, Kamal Haasan was asked about his plans to revive Marudhanayagam, which was launched in early 2000.

The project, which required a budget of over Rs100 crore back then, has remained on the drawing board for nearly two decades for lack of funds.

On the possibility of reviving Marudhanayagam, Kamal Haasan was quoted by a Cinema Express report as saying, “The happenings in the script have to be changed. [It] needs to be reworked, as it was originally written for a 40-year-old protagonist. Either I have to change the time frame and reimagine the proceedings or I have to find another suitable actor to play the role.”

It’s worth mentioning that a few years ago Lyca Productions was interested in backing Marudhanayagam.

"Subaskaran, chairman of the Lyca Group, has told me, ‘If you just make a phone call and say yes, we can start Marudhanayagam anytime'. But the massive logistics involved in the film as far as the pre-production work is quite exhaustive. Just because Subaskaran is willing to produce the film doesn’t mean I can play around with his funds without proper planning and execution," Kamal Haasan had said.

Meanwhile, the actor-filmmaker is currently shooting for Indian 2, which is on hold on account of the COVID-19 pandemic. The film, which is also bankrolled by Lyca Productions, features Siddharth, Kajal Aggarwal, Rakul Preet Singh, Bobby Simhaa and Priya Bhavani Shankar in pivotal roles alongside Kamal Haasan.

The first poster of Indian 2, which marks Kamal Haasan's reunion with Shankar after two decades, was unveiled on the occasion of Pongal earlier this year. After wrapping up the major shooting portion in India, the team plans to travel to Taiwan to shoot some key sequences.

In February, a ghastly accident on the sets of Indian 2 left three people dead and 10 injured when a crane with heavy-duty lights came crashing down. Following the accident, the shooting came to a standstill.