At a time the film industry is celebrating the centenary year of iconic actor-turned-politician MG Ramachandran who is affectionately called MGR, Sai Nagaraj, an ardent fan of the late legend, has given a digital makeover to one of his yesteryear cult movies Adimai Penn and released it in Tamil Nadu.
The movie released way back in 1969 was produced under MGR’s home banner Emgeeyar Pictures and had him in a double role of father and son besides young heroine Jayalalithaa also in dual roles of twin sisters. K.V. Mahedevan’s music was the main stay in the film, which also marked debut singing of Jaya with the ‘Amma Endral Anbu’ number.
“I am a hard core fan of MGR and grew up watching his films. I strongly believe that he was the only person who, be it in cinema or real life, lived by his word. When I turned producer, I bought the rights of films (for digital release) produced by MGR, namely Adimai Penn, Ulagam Suttrum Vaaliban and Nadodi Mannan which also ma-rked his debut direction,” Nagaraj of Rishis Movies told DC.
“I was hugely drawn by Adimai Penn, which was made at a huge budget in a grand manner by director K. Shankar and MGR. At a time when there were no graphics, they had erected eye catchy mammoth sets of palaces, bridges, shot in real location of Jaipur Palace, hundreds of camels used for fight sequence at a desert, the climax fight with the real lion which made the film stand out. Even the dialogues are relevant to current political scenario,” he said.
About 3,000 people worked for the last three and a half years at Prasad Lab on digitalisation. “We did Digital Intermediate, cinemascope, enhanced surround sound effects, color correction, special effects,” he said adding that it cost him Rs 85 lakh for the digital version. The film has been released in 100 screens across the state.
Adimai Penn’s digitalised version with its superior quality lived up to the hype and anticipation it created during the pre-release time. One cannot but wonder the uncanny semblance the script had with the recent blockbuster hit S.S. Rajamouli’s Baahubali -the beginning and conclusion. And thoughtfully the digital version of Adimai Penn has the interesting tagline ‘The Real Beginning - Never Concludes’.
Nagaraj believes that a film which ran for a continuous 175 days when released 48 years back and made a record collection of Rs 2.5 crores (which is roughly equivalent to Rs 350 crores now) will be lapped up by not only MGR, Jayalalithaa fans but also youth of today and cinema buffs alike.
