Is Bala’s ‘Varma’ releasing soon?

Director Bala is one of the modern greats of Tamil cinema and he is known for shaping the careers of many a star with his uncanny ability to extract great performances from his cast.  Chiyaan Vikram, Suriya, Karunaas, Mottai Rajendran, Janani Iyer, Pooja and G.M Kumar owe their current status to the tough taskmaster.

Chiyaan Vikram wanted his son Dhruv Vikram to debut in Bala’s direction and thats how ‘Arjun Reddy’ Tamil remake rights were bought.  Bala directed ‘Varmaa’ with Dhruv Vikram and Megha replacing Vijay Devarakonda and Shalini Pandey from the original with Raiza Wilson and Easwari Rao in important roles.  The trailer was released in the end of 2018 but in February 2019 E4 Entertainment’s Mukesh Ratan Lal shocked Kollywood early by stating that Bala had not made a faithful remake but with his own vision which was not what the production house wanted and decided to scrap the film and reshoot it with a new team.  Bala had just reacted with a statement  “I’m forced to safeguard creative freedom. It was my own decision to relieve myself from this project. Considering Dhruv Vikram’s future, I would like to end this here.”

‘Aditya Varma’ directed by Girisaayaa and starring Dhruv Vikram, Banita Sandhu and Priya Anand hit the screens on November 22nd and though Dhruv’s acting performance was lauded the film failed at the box office.  It is now rumored that E4 Entertainment to recover a part of the losses incurred has decided to release ‘Varmaa’ in the OTT platform and are already in talks with Netflix for the same.

Though there is no official word on this if at all Bala’s version of the film does get to see the light of day it would surely be lapped up by the audiences to judge whether the production house was justified in scrapping the film and make another version which did not hit the target as well.  Wait and watch for things to develop in this regard.