Hyderabad: It is now 28 years since Nayakan aka Nayagan, the 1987 Tamil film entered this world. It was written and directed by Mani Ratnam, who turned a year older on June 2, and starred Kamal Haasan. This cult classic, based on the life of gangster Varadarajan Mudaliar, was given pride of place in Time Magazine’s list ‘All time 100 Best Films' compiled in 2005.
Strangely, after making this critically-acclaimed project, the two maestros never came together again. All that is about to change. We have learnt that Kamal and Mani will be reuniting to do their next film, be warned that it doesn’t have anything to do with Nayakan.
Rumour has it that after Nayakan’s runaway success, both actor and director became too big in stature to be accommodated in one film, despite being family. Mani is married to Kamal’s elder brother Charu Haasan’s daughter Suhasini. Kamal and Mani spoke at length and decided that their collaboration would happen now, or never.
Says Kamal, “All I will say is, the answer to the question that haunts both of us — why not another film together after Nayakan? — will soon be answered. Nayakan is no doubt the most influential film of my career. I suspect Mani feels the same.”
The only other thing we know is that their upcoming film is likely to be a Hindi-Tamil bilingual. Watch this space.
