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Anil to star in Mudhalvan remake

Rajitha

Shankar, the Tamil director of superhits like Gentleman, Kaadhalan, Indian and Mudhalvan (not to forget the Aishwarya Rai-starrer, Jeans, that chalked up big money on the Andhra marquee) is all set to reprise his last hit in Hindi.

Mudhalvan, Shankar's latest outing, will thus be made under producer A M Rathnam's banner, with Anil Kapoor playing the role essayed in the original by Arjun and Rani Mukherjee reprising the role played in the Tamil version by Manisha Koirala.

At the point of writing this, casting for some of the peripheral roles is on in Bombay.

Briefly told, the Mudhalvan story runs thus: A young reporter gets a chance to interview the chief minister of a state live, on television. Armed with documentary evidence, the reporter turns the heat on various misdeeds of the CM. To get out of the trap, the CM says, "It is easy for you guys to ask questions, you should sit in that seat for one day to see what it feels like. Would you dare be CM for a day?"

Cornered in his turn, the reporter agrees. And, since he is not part of the machinery and thus subject to its pulls and pressures, he manages to do an immense amount of good in one day -- in the process, putting the CM himself in jail.

The CM wants revenge. The people want the reporter to become CM full time. The resulting pulls and pressures are what the rest of the story is about.

For those who came in late, Shankar had earlier turned thumbs down to a proposal for the film to be remade with Shah Rukh Khan in the lead.

Sources indicate that the Khan was keen to work on the project and had even offered bulk dates. However, the movie-makers got a touch of chill around the feet because of Shah Rukh's own production, Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani, which was released around the same time as Mudhalvan.

In PBDHH, Shah Rukh plays a television reporter -- and in Mudhalvan, the hero is at the outset of the film a television videographer turned reporter, before fate takes a hand and catapults him to higher office.

The resemblance between the two films, thus, was superficial and limited only to some of the opening sequences -- but the resemblance was there and the movie-makers decided it was too much of a risk to take to cast Shah Rukh.

Further, Mudhalvan is a director-driven subject and the feeling was that a superstar would overshadow the character; that audiences would see the star, not the character. And that this would detract from the impact of the story.

Hence, Anil Kapoor. An actor seen as being able to blend in with the story. An actor, moreover, who has had quite a few successes reprising Tamil originals -- the last of them being Priyadarshan's Virasat, wherein he played the role essayed by Kamal Haasan in the Tamil original Thevar Magan.

The film is due to go on the floors shortly.