Tamil Features

Mashup Videos, Common DPs, And Re-Releases, Here’s How Fans Are Celebrating Vijay’s Birthday

By Aparajitha Balu
Vijay At The 'Master' Audio Launch
Vijay At The 'Master' Audio Launch

It is actor Vijay’s birthday tomorrow, and there’s been huge frenzy right through the month of June with mashups, posters, common DP’s (Display profile), and the ‘Twitter tag trend’ almost every day.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Over the past few months, Vijay Makkal Iyakkam (VMI), his social welfare organisation, has been helping people across the state during lockdown by providing essentials, food, and money. They also donated groceries to the Film Employees’ Federation of South India (FEFSI) and were offered money by the actor to continue their service.

In the beginning of June, Vijay informed his fans that they shouldn’t indulge in any grand celebrations and instead asked for them to stay indoors and provide help to the needy. The celebrations have shifted turf, it’s all now on social media. In fact, fans took to Twitter to trend ‘ #THALAPATHYMonthBegins’ on the eve of May 31 itself and clocked more than 9,75,000 tweets. On June 1, they went on to record more tweets.

Following this, V4U Media, a popular PR company that is currently in charge of the actor’s Master put out a poster asking fans to send in short videos wishing the actor. The company has also promised that these will reach the actor.

An announcement was then made on June 7 that a CDP (common display picture, which is now routinely done for stars’ birthdays where other celebs launch these images) for Vijay’s birthday will be released on June 13 at 6.30 pm. It was  released by 27 celebrities, including directors Lokesh Kanagaraj, Mohan Raja, Ajay Gnanamuthu, Rathna Kumar, actors Andrea Jeremiah, Keerthy Suresh, Varalaxmi Sarathkumar, Shanthanu, Kajal Aggarwal, Indhuja Ravichandran, lyricist Vivek, producer Hema Rukmani, and Dhananjayan along with the ‘THALAPATHYBdayFestCDP’ hashtag.

On June 12, the first ‘official mashup’ video for the actor dropped. Actors Athulya Ravi, Premgi Amaren, and Yogi Babu released the mashup for the actor. The videos comprised shots and dialogues from the actor’s films, short clippings of his audio launch speeches, and statistics of box office collections of his recent projects. Following this, a slew of mashups for the star created by several fans and studios were put out through the weeks.

Even before the CDP was unveiled, fans had begun the ‘THALAPATHYBdayFestCDP’ trend with more than five lakh tweets. Once the DP was released, fans changed their DPs as per ‘tradition’, and tweeted away reaching more than three million tweets. Although, the count now is higher.

The poster had the name ‘Thalapathy Vijay’ carved in Tamil, in gold, with two men on either side holding on to two large golden tusks, on top of a golden stage. While Vijay is seen seated on top of his name, one can find miniature soldiers holding red flags with Vijay’s face on it, below the stage. We also find ‘#StayHomeStaySafe’ and ‘Welfare Day’ on the poster that has been designed by Shynu Mash, a publicity designer and CEO of Nxt Gen Studios.

For his Telugu fan base, composer Thaman, who is rumoured to be scoring for the actor’s next film, released a Telugu common DP on June 14. The poster has been designed by O K Arjun.

Online polls and usual tweets kept pouring in for the actor and almost reached the trending list every day. On June 16, fans announced that they will be dropping a ‘Birthday Poster’, much like a first-look poster, instead of just releasing a common DP on June 21.

On June 17, Vijay’s Bigil hit the headlines once again owing to its re-release in France and Germany. While the Indian film industry is still in the dark on when theatres and the film industry will function normally, France and Germany have gone ahead and reopened theatres with Bigil being among the early films to screen there.

While Germany had screenings only today at Cinemaxx Krefeld and Offenbach, France will begin tomorrow and continue until the end of the month at Gaumont Saint-Denis for a period of nine days.

Proving that big stars’ birthdays are now are as extravagant as their movie releases, there was more coming. On June 17, the release date of the motion poster of the common DP that was earlier released was announced. It was fixed for June 19 at 6 pm. The announcement about composer Edwin Louis’ birthday tribute song for the star titled ‘Thalapathy Raid’, inspired by the actor’s ‘Vaathi Raid’, was also made. It was to be released by actors Shanthanu and Premgi Amaren.

On June 18, Seven Screen Studio‘s Lalit Kumar, the line producer of Master, put out a special poster for the actor. It was a sculpture of the actor, that was being chiseled by his film’s characters, Vetrimaaran from Mersal, Jagadish from Thuppakki, and Michael from Bigil to name a few. They even got the poster printed on Maalai Malar newspaper’s front page.

A birthday tribute was also released and has clocked more than four lakh views now. The catchy tribute glorifies the actor with clippings and dialogues from his films.

On June 19, the birthday common DP motion poster dropped. The 40-second video has been done by Sabari Ramiro and Nxt Gen Studio with music by Allan Preetham. With the kada, chalk piece marks, and background score, one can easily tell that it’s also an ode to his Master.

On June 20, a song titled ‘En Uyir Thalapathy’ was released by 46 celebrities. The melody talks about the actor’s grounded character and the way he respects everybody around him. It is a unique soothing single track amongst the  bunch of ear-splitting mashups. Actors Iswarya Menon, R Parthiepan, Daniel Balaji, Sakshi Agarwal, Gouri G Kishan, Kalaiarasan, DOP Santosh Sivan, Sandy master, composer Justin Prabhakaran, and several others were among the list of celebrities who released the song.

On June 21, today, a ‘Birthday Poster’ was released by Lokesh Kanagaraj at 6 pm along with the birthday tag- ‘#HBDTHALAPATHYVijay’ that is doing the rounds now and will do so all day tomorrow.

The poster has been designed by Clinton Roach. It features Vetrimaaran (one of Vijay’s character in Mersal) leaping amongst his fans who are seen holding flags with his face and the letters ‘Unnal Mudiyum’. On the left side of the poster, we find a few hands getting a hold of his leg symbolising that they’d have his back through thick and thin. The words ‘Edhirka Edhirka Ezhuven En Rasigargaludan’ meaning ‘I’d keep rising up with my fans as you keep opposing me’ also features on the poster.

A special design poster, a poster honouring soldiers who were martyred at the Galwan Valley owing to the India-China face-off, a tribute video from Thenandal Studio Limited, and Think Music has also dropped. By then ‘#HBDTHALAPATHYVijay’ tag had also crossed more than 2 million tweets.

Apart from the mainstream birthday celebrations, the month also offered a lot more for fans to celebrate. The South Indian film industry has always had the tradition of taking note of the number of likes and views a film’s trailer, teaser, and songs rake in. And if the film stars one like Vijay or Ajith, fans are always on the lookout for videos to break records. Master song ‘Vaathi Coming’ recorded 50 million views while ‘Kutti Story’ recorded 60 million views.

The hashtag ‘Vijay’ has also recorded 5 billion views on the Tik Tok app while ‘Thalapathy’, as the actor is fondly referred to, has recorded 4.3 billion views. It is noteworthy that a video of actress Shilpa Shetty dancing to ‘Vaathi Coming’ on Tik Tok had recently gone viral on social media.

Meanwhile, Vijay’s Master which is in the post-production stage will be among the first releases to hit the screens post-lockdown. Theatre owners and distributors, who are currently in a crisis due to the emergence of OTT and the shutting down of theatres, have pinned hopes on the film to bounce back from the predicament.

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The Lokesh Kanakaraj film also stars Malavika Mohanan, Vijay Sethupathi, Andrea Jeremiah, Shanthnu Bhagyaraj, and Arjun Das and was shot over a span of 129 days.

With Anirudh on music, Sathyan Sooryan on camera, Sathees Kumar on art, and Philomin Raj on edit, the film was earlier supposed to hit the screens on April 9, 2020, but was postponed because of the lockdown.

Aparajitha Balu is a Alum at Silverscreen India, and can be reached by email at aparajitha@silverscreen.in