Meet the Manjummel Boys

The team of Manjummel Boys on what the success of the movie means to them

nce upon a time, a man fell into a pit and his friends helped him get out. This seeminglysimple storyline is the base around which Manjummel Boys revolves.

In Tamil Nadu, where the film has been a blockbuster, the crucial climax featuring Soubin Shahir, Sreenath Bhasi and the rest of the actors — peppered with a song from Kamal Haasan’s 1991 Tamil film Guna — met with rapturous applause, something largely reserved for the entry scenes of the superstar.

Manjummel Boys has made history, becoming the first Malayalam film to collect ₹200 crore at the global box office. The motley team behind the film discussed it during a recent visit to The Hindu office in Chennai. Excerpts:

OChidambaram, Director

The response Manjummel Boys got from Tamil Nadu has been overwhelming; we were really not ready for this!

The writing process was tough; I had it in my mind that the film had to start with the song from Guna. For the climax, as the situation was claustrophobic, the melody would help calm things down. The lines perfectly fell in place.

When I first met the reallife Subhash [the film is based on a real incident], I realised that the story is about an atheist becoming God. Because, someone who has almost seen death and come back is equal to God; so I decided to write my screenplay around this. I also decided to cast many directors as actors in the film — Soubin (Parava), Lal Jr. (Driving License) and Khalid Rahman (Unda, Thallumala), and that worked in my favour.

The success of Manjummel Boys might eventually pave the way for bigger films in Malayalam cinema. However, as writers for Malayalam films, we keep thinking about the budget. That limitation, I believe, is our superpower.

We are releasing its Telugu and Hindi dubbed versions on April 6. Personally, I do not want it to release on any OTT platform soon!

Abhiram Radhakrishnan, Actor

The entire shoot was a lot of fun. The director actually had to tell us that the film was over and that we could all go home!

The placement of ‘Kanmani anbodu’ song is so perfect. When we first saw the song during the spotedit phase, we all were in tears.