Prithviraj Sukumaran, the Malayalam actor who made his directorial debut with the Mohanlal-starrer Lucifer, revealed in a recent interview with Pinkvilla that Empuraan, the sequel to Lucifer, is still on the cards and will likely go on floors by mid 2022.
The actor-turned-director noted that if not for the pandemic, they would have been shooting for the second part of Lucifer now and in fact, might even have finished filming for the project.
“It’s a film that requires the world to open up and the travel scenarios to be back to normal,” Prithviraj said, adding that he hopes by the time he finishes with Aadujeevitham as an actor, which should be sometime mid next year, things are close enough to normal for him to start working on Lucifer 2.
Produced by Antony Perumbavoor under the Aashirvad Cinemas banner, Lucifer was released on March 28, 2019. The film, written by Murali Gopy, revolves around Stephen Nedumbally (Mohanlal), a politician from the high ranges in central Kerala, who is revealed to have a second identity – that of an international drug lord named Abram Khureshi.
Three months after the film’s release, Prithviraj and Mohanlal announced the sequel titled Empuraan, which is expected to follow the protagonist’s life before and after the time period covered in Lucifer.
Recommended
Speaking about working with Mohanlal, Prithviraj, who has directed the veteran actor in two films now, Lucifer and Bro Daddy, noted that he plays a pivotal role in Mohanlal’s upcoming directorial debut, Barroz: Guardian of D’Gama’s Treasure. “We shot for a couple of weeks, but had to stop the shoot due to the second wave of pandemic,” he added.
Earlier, Prithviraj had revealed that there are discussions about making Lucifer into an eight-episode miniseries in Hindi. In conversation with Film Companion, he had said that Lucifer was initially conceived as a series and also added that the story arc from the beginning till the end of the third part was completely sketched out.
“Initially, we planned it as a three-part streaming series. We then made Lucifer out of the first season. Now, we’ve decided to make feature films with the original material from seasons two and three,” Prithviraj had said.