Rajinikanth’s popularity is at an all-time high.

The Super Star of South Indian films is currently acting in the costliest movie ever made in India — Rs.60 crore as per last count.

Elsewhere, the big man’s fame is also going places. He is able to find new frontiers of famedom.

If his Chandramukhi broke new grounds in film distribution, his older movies are now becoming popular in the European market.

Readers may recall that his Muthu became a raging hit in Japan. Then a French filmmaker used clips from the same film in his movie.

Now Billa, Rajini’s blockbuster of the 80s, is hogging the limelight.

This time it is again for the French.

France’s deputy director of Film France Commission Nationale, Frank Priot, was in Chennai recently.

As it happened, he chanced upon a DVD of Rajini hits. One of them happened to be Billa.

Priot was impressed with what he saw. The comedy sequences in Billa, he felt, were very interesting and pretty good.

Priot intended to take those DVDs back to France.

Now what next? A Rajini retrospective in the French film festival?

That will be good news not just for Rajini fans, but for the lovers of Tamil cinema worldwide.