Biopics galore in Kollywood

When it comes to films,

biopics

are an interesting genre. Artistic liberty lets the filmmaker add a dash of masala to cash in on the popularity of the real-life person on whom the movies are made. This makes for great plots, which the audience seem to love, as we have seen in many recent cases in Bollywood. Movies like MS Dhoni: The Untold Story and Sanju were enjoyed by Tamil audiences, too.

Kollywood

too has had its share of biopics — Periyar, Bharathi, Kamaraj, Veerapandiya Kattabomman... and then, the genre, sort of faded away, only to make a grand comeback, if one were to go by the current line-up of biopics south filmmakers are promising us...

ChandrababuActor-director Parthiban is all set to make a biopic on veteran actor Chandrababu. Parthiban completed the script work quite some time ago and had registered it, too. Prabhudeva will play the role of the yesteryear actor in this yet-to-be-titled project. Parthiban will be deciding on the rest of the cast once the project gets a financier. Meanwhile, K Rajeshwar, known for films like Amaran and Kovilpatti Veeralakshmi is also coming up with a movie on the versatile artiste. According to him, the movie, which will be bankrolled by an Indo-Russian production company, will be dubbed in Russian as well. The filmmaker, however, is yet to decide on the actor who will be essaying Chandrababu’s character.

J JayalalithaaWhose life could appear more fascinating for filmmakers than hers? The Iron Lady’s life, which remains an inspiration and a mystery, has been a roller-coaster ride. The mystery behind her demise continues and that has only added more curiosity to the film(s) being announced on her. There was news that directors Bharathirajaa, A Priyadhaarshini and Vijay were keen on making a biopic on the former CM of Tamil Nadu. Priyadhaarshini won the announcement race when she went ahead and announced the title Iron Lady for her project before anyone else did. She’s also announced Nithya Menen as Jayalalithaa in her film.

Velupillai PrabhakaranDirector Venkatesh Kumar G, whose controversial film Neelam, based on the Sri Lankan civil war was banned by the Censor Board, recently announced his next. He is all set to bring the life of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran alive on screen with Bobby Simha essaying the role of the leader. Titled Seerum Puli with the tagline Rise Of The People’s Leader, the first look of the project was released recently, on Prabhakaran's birthday. The movie will be made in two parts, chronicling the entire life of Prabhakaran.

Nambi

NarayananFilmmakers evincing interest on the life of extraordinary ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan isn’t a surprise. The episodes he went through in his career are more than enough to make for an an edge-of-the-seat thriller — all it needs is a proper arrangement of sequences to cater to the audiences. With R Madhavan coming on board to play the scientist, film lovers are waiting eagerly to know how the latter being charged with espionage has been handled in the film, which is titled Rocketry. It is to be made in five languages, and will have Madhavan co-directing it along with Ananth Mahadevan.

Narain KarthikeyanA leading production company has plans to make a biopic on India’s first F1 racer Narain Karthikeyan. It’s said that the company and the racer had some discussions, and Upen Patel was in their minds to play the lead role. When the actor was in Chennai, shooting for Boomerang, the production team had approached him. As an avid lover of the sport, Upen is said to have shown interest in the project. An earlier report said that the film is likely to be made in both Tamil and Hindi.