Thalapathy Vijay's ambitious historical drama that never happened

Filmmaker-actor Sasikumar has revealed intriguing details about an ambitious project he once planned with Thalapathy Vijay. Speaking in a recent interview, Sasikumar recalled that he had eagerly pitched a cop investigation thriller to Vijay, only to have the actor express interest in a different, more daring script.

"I had prepared a cop investigation thriller for Vijay. That's what I wanted to narrate to him. But he wanted to know about my most ambitious movie. And I told him I had a script for a historical movie," Sasikumar told Cinema Vikatan. He had developed the historical drama with writer Su. Venkatesan, a collaboration that caught Vijay’s attention.

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When Su. Venkatesan gave the narration to Vijay, the superstar was thoroughly impressed. "At the end of it, he shook hands with Venkatesan and said it was the best narration he had ever heard in his career," Sasikumar recalled, adding that he didn’t expect Vijay to agree to such a script given its unconventional elements. "It surprised me when he agreed to do the movie and even suggested a producer for it."

However, the project faced a major hurdle: its massive budget. "The movie's budget was huge. This was before Baahubali, and Vijay told me we could revisit the project four years later," Sasikumar explained. Despite pitching other ideas to Vijay in subsequent meetings, the actor remained adamant that the historical drama should be their first collaboration, expressing his confidence in the script.

While the Indian film market has drastically evolved since the release of Baahubali—making such large-scale projects more feasible—the Tamil film industry at the time found it too risky to accommodate the budget required for Sasikumar’s historical epic.

Unfortunately, it appears the ambitious project may never come to fruition. Vijay has announced his decision to step away from acting after completing Thalapathy 69, choosing instead to focus on his political career. 

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