'Indian' Originally Planned With Rajnikanth Instead Of Kamal!

Universal hero Kamal Haasan and Shankar's high-budget pan-Indian social drama 'Indian 2' is all set to hit the screens on 12th July. There are good expectations on it and Shankar is synonymous for his message-oriented films that have a strong impact on the society. Ahead of its release, here are some interesting facts about the origin of 'Indian' and how things shaped up.

As a director, Shankar gained a lot of fame with his debut film 'Gentleman'. Realizing his potential, Rajnikanth showed interest in working with him. While making 'Premikudu', Shankar and his team readied a script titled 'Periya Manushan'. But with Rajni being busy with other projects, the movie kept on getting delayed.

Sources say that Shankar made a few changes in that script and turned it into 'Indian'. Apparently, he wanted to take Rajasekhar for Senapathi's role and get Nagarjuna or Venkatesh to play the son's role in the movie. But it did not work out and Tamil heroes like Karthik and Satyaraj were also approached. With Kamal Haasan getting highly impressed with the script, he did both father and son roles.

They wanted to take Aishwarya Rai as the heroine but her contract with the ad agency did not allow her to give dates to this film. Shankar really liked Manisha Koirala in 'Bombay' and brought her onboard as the heroine. Producer AM Ratnam picked Urmila Matondkar as the second heroine after making the youth go crazy with 'Rangeela'. Radhika was the initial choice of Senapathi's wife role but Sukanya did it later.

The performance of Kamal as Senapathi stayed in the hearts of people forever. Kamal was around 40 years old at that time and he used prosthetic makeup to look like a 70-year-old man. It was a lot of burden for the actor to work with prosthetics on his face. Oscar-winning makeup artist Michael Westmore worked on Kamal's look in the movie. The 'Marmakala' became a huge topic in those days and Kamal took training for that too.

Shankar is known for using technology and he used Subhash Chandrabose's original footage and used it in this movie. The movie arrived on 9th May 1996 and got the highest collections in Kollywood. It won a lot of National Awards that year which included Best Actor for Kamal. Music by AR Rahman played a key role in the film's success. Especially the 'Pachani Chilukalu' song remained in everyone's hearts forever.