“Kudi Mahaan is my visiting card” – Actor Vijay Sivan
“There isn’t any need for heroism for a newcomer” – Actor Vijay Sivan’s clarity
“Kudi Mahaan will get me the right opportunities” – Actor Vijay Sivan’s confidence
Every week, the Tamil industry frequently visits at least 3-5 releases in the theaters. It turns out to be a big challenge for small-budget movies to compete with the big star flicks. In fact, the success of small and medium-budget movies happens once in a while, and movies like Pariyerum Perumal, Love Today, and Dada have been ample pieces of evidence of it. However, these movies have owned strong support through some eminent personalities to push them forward and take them to the lanes of a successful run.
On the other hand, good content-driven movies fail to fetch praise due to various factors that in turn become a saddening scenario. One such movie is ‘Kudi Mahaan’, which was released last month in the theaters.
Although the press and media fraternity had acclaimed and praised the film, it failed to retain its theatrical run due to limited screens, and the arrival of new movies during the same and following weekends, thereby failing to garner a good response from the audiences.
Vijay Sivan played the lead role and produced the film ‘Kudi Mahaan’, which had an amalgamation of good entertainment and humor along with family entertainer elements.
Filmmaker N. Prakash, who shot to fame by winning the Runner-up title in the ‘Nalaiya Iyakkunar Season 6’, has directed this film…
Actor Vijay Sivan shares his experience of acting and producing this film, along with his future plans in the industry.
“I embarked on my journey in the film industry with a sheer and intense passion for acting. Since it’s not an easy opportunity in mainstream cinema, I got a chance to express my acting abilities through short films and then gradually happened to be a part of the Nalaiya Iyakkunar show. I developed a friendly bonding with Prakash during that time. Later, our film ‘Kutti Dhadha’ offered us some opportunities, thereby taking us to the gateway of mainstream cinema.
Usually, the short filmmakers and their crew decide to adapt the same short film as a full-length feature movie in their maiden debut. Since our movie ‘Kutty Dhadha’ demanded for more budgets, we decided to go for a fresh script.
It all happened during the time when Corona wave started to take a rise in toll. Kudi Mahaan was created during this time. And we shot the entire film gradually with the corona restrictions and somehow pushed it for theatrical release last month.
The press, media fraternity, and theater owners praised the movie stating they are witnessing the enjoyment and laughter of family audiences in the theaters after a long time. Although it was really elating, we couldn’t take the movie to the general audiences properly due to the time constraints during the theatrical release. Now we are planning to get the movie streamed on the OTT platform.
I produced this film, using this as an opportunity to showcase my acting abilities. I wanted the audience to identify me as a natural actor and hence didn’t want any heroic elements in the first movie. I was so predetermined about this factor. Hence, I gave complete freedom to director N Prakash to finalize the story and casting according to his own interests. Usually, I don’t like interfering in others’ work, and this helped me to focus on my character.
My co-stars like Chandini Tamilarasan, Namo Narayanan, Suresh Chakravarthy, and others didn’t have any ego and supported a newcomer like me, which helped a lot in delivering better performances. In fact, their contribution to the film has been immensely great. Their encouragement and suggestions helped me a lot in fine-tuning my performance.
As a producer, I did my best without any compromises to make sure that the final output is achieved just as envisaged by the director on script papers. I had greater expectations of getting recognized by producers and directors through this movie, but the theatrical release option didn’t create such opportunities. But I am confident that the film will garner a phenomenal response and find a greater reach through the OTT release. I am keeping my fingers crossed that my acting potential will be recognized and I will find good opportunities in the future with this film,” says actor-producer Vijay Sivan.
