On our Throwback Thursday weekly column we take a look back at Tamil cinema's biggest multistarrer ever, 'Suyamvaram' which also found its place in the Guinness Book of World Records for completing shooting inside of 24 hours. The film's ensemble cast includes Karthik, Prabhu, Sathyaraj, Bhagyaraj, Arjun, Pandiarajan, Parthiban, Prabhu Deva, Vineeth, Vignesh, Napolean, Manzoor Ali Khan, Vijayakumar, Khushbu,Roja, Ramba, Heera, Kasthuri, Aishwarya, Suvalakshmi and Manjula among others.

'Suyamvaram' was concieved as an idea by producer Giridharlal Nagpal and he produced the film under the banner LS Movies.  The screenplay and dialogues were written by Siraj and fourteen directors collaborated namely Sundar C, K.S. Ravikumar, R. Sundarajan, Arjun, P. Vasu, Guru Danapal, K. Subash, Liaqot Ali Khan, E. Ramdoss, Keyaar, A.R. Ramesh, J.Panneer, Selva and Siraj.

Four music directors S.A. Rajkumar, Deva, Sirpy and Vidyasagar composed the music while seventeen cinematographers and four editors were on board.  The film had 21 locations and the amazing thing is that the late art director G.K. handled all of them.

The shooting of 'Suyamvaram' started at 7 am at AVM on 5th April 1999 and completed at 6.50 am  on the 6th and all the aspects of production like filming, editing,dubbing, re-recording and final mixing and the first copy were all finished within that time.19 associate directors, 45 assistant directors, 19 cameramen, 36 assistant cameramen, nine steadycam operators, 14 heroes, 12 heroines, villains, comedians, five dance masters, 16 assistants, 140 chorus dancers, stunt coordinators, art director, makeup, costume and set designers, 15 film units, a still photographer and 1,483 extras made the dream come true.

Sivaji Ganesan and K.R. Vijaya were considered for pivotal roles but due to the former's health conditions were replaced by Vijayakumar and Manjula.  Rajini and Kamal were also rumoured to feauture in 'Suyamvaram' but though they did not act in the project both of them launched the project.

'Suyamvaram' released on the 16th of July 1999 and had a decent run at the box office and also holds the Guinness Record for casting the most stars in a film and also for being the quickest ever feature-length film made, with filming being completed in 23 hours and 58 minutes.

If anyone happens to view 'Suyamvaram' even now will be surprised that it is quite a decent watch considering its production period and will wonder how some so called mega flicks that take so many months to complete aren;t half as good.