varnachitram

Few years back we saw director Fazil doing a delicate trapeze act in a movie which had both Mohanlal  and Mammootty. Walking on egg shells, the director decided to have two different climaxes for the movie. If you were in Malabar region, you would have seen Mammootty winning Juhi Chawla and if you were from South Kerala, Mohanlal was the lucky man.

Few folks have decided to take this model to the next level. Padmakumar was planning a movie with Mammootty for a long time and lot of story ideas were floated, ranging from auto driver to astronaut. Finally this is what they came up with:

In Parinthu, Mammootty is a “ruthless moneylender ‘Gillette’ Purushothaman, for whom money is ultimate thing in life. He uses all dirty and crude tricks to get his interest and principal back from his creditors”.[Madambi Vs Parinthu]

Meanwhile Writer/Director B.Unnikrishnan teamed up with Mohanlal for Madambi.

In Madambi, Mohanlal plays Gopalakrishna Pillai, “a kind hearted money lender in a village who knows how to get his interest and principal amount back using the right pressure technique.”[Madambi Vs Parinthu ]

If this is not thinking out of the box, we don’t know what is.  With this model, Mammotty does not have to give up Navneet Kaur, Lakshmi Rai, Roma and other 19 year olds in Trivandrum area and Mohanlal gets to dance with Kavya in Malabar region. It is a Win-Win situation.

This is a cute idea which will keep both fans groups happy. Theaters will be full with fans of both stars watching both movies to see who has performed the same story in a better way. This model is easy on the writers and directors too. Instead of pandering to two star egoes they can pander to one ego and use rest of the energy in directing the movie.

Unfortunately this model will work only for the two super stars and not for shooting stars, asteroids and black holes. Imagine releasing two versions of Mulla, one with Dileep and one with Prithviraj or De Ingottu Nokkiye with a Jayasurya version and Kalabhavan Mani version. The producers of such movies know the risk and what works for minor stars is not individual movies, but an ensemble cast , like Classmates or Swapnakoodu.

We hope our neighbors don’t pick up this neat trick. Else we will have to watch movies like Kuruvi, once with Vijay (which is punishment enough) followed by one with Ajith and god forbid, S J Surya.

On this day..

• Priyadarshan - some candid views - 2006

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