Check out the big stars Kamal Haasan planned to cast for his ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ in 1989

At the spectacular audio and trailer launch event of Mani Ratnam’s ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ legends Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan made is an even more special occasion by sharing their own stories in connection with the epic.

Kamal in his speech stated “Two youngsters leaning on a bike in Alwarpet dreamt of making PonniyinSelvan years ago, . While one tried and moved on to do other things. The other one kept on trying and finally made it a reality. It’s none other than Mani Ratnam”.

It is now revealed that Kamal the pioneer and innovator of most things in Indian cinema planned to film ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ in 1989 itself and at that time it was budgeted at rupees two crores (Now the two parts have reportedly been made with a budget of rupees five hundred crores).

While Kamal wanted to play Vandhiyadevan (Now played by Karthi), it was suggested to him by Sivaji Ganesan to cast Rajini in the role.  Kamal accepting that opted to play Arun Mozhi Varman.  Vijayakanth was the first choice to play Adita Karikalan while Sathyaraj, Prabhu, Karthik were also considered for the other important characters.

The same sources say that Sivaji Ganesan was approached to play Periya Pazhuvettarayar now played by Sarathkumar.  Sridevi and Madhuri Dixit were the first choices for Nandhini and  Kundavai respectively. 

The massive scale of Kalki’s vision is what prevented several attempts to film ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ with MGR being the first to attempt in the sixties and seventies.  These historical evidences help in gauging that Mani Ratnam has truly pulled off a near impossible task by bringing the novel to the big screen that too with such a stellar cast.

‘Ponniyin Selvan’ releasing in five languages worldwide in theaters on September 30th has music by A.R. Rahman.  The principal starcast comprises of Vikram, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Jayam Ravi, Karthi, Trisha, Aishwarya Lekshmi, Sobhita Dhulipala, Prabhu, R Sarathkumar, Vikram Prabhu, Jayaram, Prakash Raj, Rahman, and R Parthiban.