The Smile Man, the upcoming Tamil film starring actor-politician Sarath Kumar in the lead role, is a crime thriller, says Syam of the director duo Syam-Praveen, in a conversation with Silverscreen India.
It marks the 150th film of Sarath Kumar, who was last seen in the web series Irai. The actor announced the film and released a poster on social media recently. The Smile Man is produced by Salil Das under the Magnum Movies banner.
Speaking about the film, Syam says, “Sarath Kumar plays the role of a retired police officer and his character suffers from Alzheimer’s. The film is about how he finds a murderer, while suffering from bouts of memory loss.”
Aside from Sarath Kumar, the cast of The Smile Man includes Ineya, Sija Rose, George Maryan and child artist Alia.
The filmmaker adds, “We got the idea for this story in November 2021 and pitched it to our team.” The screenplay and dialogues are written by Anand.
“Having been friends for 14 years, Praveen and I decided to co-direct this film as well,” says Syam. The duo previously co-directed their debut project Memories, which is awaiting release. Also a thriller, the film stars actor Vetri as a man with short-term memory loss who gets accused of murder.
Meanwhile, the filming of The Smile Man is currently underway, with Sree Saravanan serving as the cinematographer. The project went on floors in the last week of February and is being shot at Palakkad and Coimbatore. “We are looking to wrap up within the next 30-40 days,” the director mentions.
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The technical crew includes San Lokesh as the film’s editor and Gavaskar Avinash as the music director. “We have not decided on the number of songs that will be included in the film, but we are planning to shoot them as montages. We are trying our best to move away from the typical, conventional style of songs to offbeat ones, even though it is a commercial film,” says Syam.
The filmmaker adds that they are looking to release The Smile Man in theatres over the summer.