Actor Prakash Raj has joined the cast of director Mani Ratnam‘s upcoming multilingual historical drama Ponniyin Selvan on Thursday. Raj tweeted to say that he was reflecting on his journey with Mani Ratnam, which began 25 years ago with the film Iruvar.
Ponniyin Selvan has an ensemble cast from the Tamil and Malayalam industries, as well as from Bollywood. Besides Prakash Raj, the cast includes actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Vikram, Karthi, Trisha, Jayam Ravi, Aishwarya Lekshmi, Sobhita Dhulipala, Prabhu, Jayaram, Lal, Sarath Kumar, Rahman, and Ashwin Kakamanu.
The film is based on the historical Tamil novel, Ponniyin Selvan, written by Kalki (pen name of the Tamil writer, Ramaswamy Krishnamurthy). The five-volume novel tells the story of the early days of Arulmozhivarman, who later went on to become the Chola emperor Rajaraja Chola I. It is believed that Kalki took nearly 3 years to complete the four-volume novel.
Ponniyin Selvan‘s title poster was released in January 2020.
The film’s shooting is currently going on in Hyderabad, after delays due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Actor Mohan Ram had recently tweeted to say he was re-joining the sets after ten months.
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Mani Ratnam had announced plans for a film adaptation of Ponniyin Selvan with Mahesh Babu, Vijay, and Anushka Shetty in the lead, back in the early 2000s. However, the project, which was set to be Mahesh Babu’s debut film, had to be dropped due to budget issues.
In April 2020, Mani Ratnam confirmed in a live session with fans on Instagram that the film would be made in two parts.
The film has AR Rahman composing music, Ravi Varman handling cinematography, Sreekar Prasad handling the editing, and Thota Tharani in charge of production design. Writer Jeyamohan is writing the dialogues.
Ponniyin Selvan is being jointly produced by Mani Ratnam and Lyca Productions. Siva Ananth is the film’s executive producer.