Regional

Is Rajnikanth’s illness stopping projects?

Rachana Dubey , Hindustan Times
Mumbai, July 13, 2012

Email to Author

First Published: 19:13 IST(13/7/2012)
Last Updated: 00:02 IST(14/7/2012)

Share more.

comments

Email

print

As Rajinikanth is all set to mark his comeback after illness with Kochadaiyaan, we look at his 50 best posters.

more photos »

Actor Rajinikanth’s Tamil film Kochadaiyaan with Deepika Padukone is gearing up for a worldwide release this December. However, two plum projects featuring the South superstar may not see light of day — Robot 2 and Sultan The Warrior Prince.

Last year, we reported that plans were afoot

for Robot 2 and it was likely to start after the filming of Rana was completed. Back then, director Shankar was expected to start work on the script after wrapping up the Tamil-Telugu remake of Aamir Khan’s 2009 hit, 3 Idiots.

However, at the moment, there is no clarity on Rana’s status. The film was partially shot before Rajinikanth was hospitalised last year, after which he didn’t step into the studios for several months.

Kochadaiyaan

Special-effects technician V Srinivas Mohan, who won a National Award for Robot (2010), had confirmed, “Rajni Sir will be back if and when Robot returns.” Now, he says, “We had finished a lot of work on Robot 2. It required a lot of animation and special effects. Now I’m afraid it may never take off. It’s on the backburner. It has been postponed indefinitely.”

Rajinikanth’s daughter, producer Soundarya, a special effects and animation technician herself, was producing the animated movie called Sultan The Warrior. The hero of the film is a replica of Rajinikanth. The plans took shape five years ago. According to insiders close to the South star, most of the work on the film, which was to release this year, has been completed.

Rajinikanth had even given his inputs in terms of voiceover and other visual aspects. Srinivas, who has also worked with Rajinikanth on Sivaji The Boss (2007) says, “Sultan The Warrior is shelved. It’s unfortunate because the project was extremely close to Soundarya’s heart. And all of us on the technical side had put in a lot of effort to create the characters and look of the film. A lot of work had been done. But now, Kochadaiyaan has taken centre stage.”