Mohan Raja and I spent two days with Sriram Raghavan to discuss Andhadhun: Thiagarajan

The Tamil remake of the Hindi film Andhadhun, which stars Prashanth in the lead, has a director on board! The film will be helmed by Mohan Raja, and the filmmaker has already completed the scripting work. Confirming the news, Thiagarajan, who’s acquired the remake rights, says, “A lot of reports about who would direct the film were making the rounds. But we had approached only Mohan Raja.The pre-production work is almost over, and the film will go on floors in February. Raja and I went to Mumbai last week and sat with Sriram Raghavan (director of Andhadhun) for two days to discuss the film. We spoke to him about what he thought he could have done differently after the film released, about certain scenes, what he did why he did... He spent three hours on the first day and five hours the next day with us. He was happy that the film was being made in Tamil. In fact, it was only recently that I told Sriram I’d remade his Johnny Gaddar as Johnny with Prashanth. He is a south Indian and speaks good Tamil.”
Ask him if he approached Raja because he’s successfully handled remakes before, and the actor-director-producer retorts, “No, not at all. Raja is a commercially successful director. All his films have resonated with the audiences, and he can handle all kinds of scripts. His Thani Oruvan and Velaikkaran, which did really well and won critical acclaim, were his own scripts. We chose him because he can do justice to the kind of sensibilities that Andhadhun reflects. In fact, we were worried he might not want to do a remake as he’s planning to make a pan-India film in three-four languages.”
Andhadhun, starring Ayushmann Khurrana, Tabu and Radhika Apte, won multiple National Awards. “It was also screened in countries like China, Korea and Japan and was loved by audiences the world over. So, I want to do justice to the remake,” says Thiagarajan, who is confident that Prashanth is an apt fit to play the lead. “Prashanth has completed four stages of piano in Trinity College. He’s been practising piano for the last six months. He’s lost a whopping 22 kilos and has gone to Malaysia to train more and reduce another five kilos,” he says. The rest of the cast and technical team is yet to be finalised. “Amit Trivedi’s compositions are the soul of the film. So, we are looking at locking a composer who can create that kind of magic. We should be announcing the rest of the cast soon,” he signs off.