Ramesh Aravind’s Shivaji Surathkal 2 gets two new cast members, namely Rakesh Maiya and Vinayak Joshi

The Akash Srivatsa directorial already has Meghana Gaonkar, Radhika Narayan, Raaghu Ramanakoppa and Vidya Murthy on board.

Rakesh Maiya, Radhika Narayan, Ramesh Aravind, Akash Srivatsa, Meghana Gaonkar and Raaghu Ramanakoppa at the muhurtha of the film

Kannada cinema’s very own detective franchise, the Ramesh Aravind starrer Shivaji Surathkal, is getting its second instalment. The Akash Srivatsa-directed sequel was announced immediately after the release of the original film – Shivaji Surathkal: Ranagiri Rahasya. In the time since, given the pandemic-induced break, Akash had been working on the script and made a title announcement for his lead star Ramesh’s birthday this year - Shivaji Surathkal: The Mysterious Case of Mayavi.

Earlier this month, the filmmaker had posted images from his location recce on social media and now we hear that the team is on floors. On Thursday, in an intimate affair, select cast and crew members got together at a temple in Bengaluru for a formal muhurtha to kickstart the film. During the muhurtha, the team also announced the joining of two new cast members – Magalu Janaki fame Rakesh Maiya, who plays a rookie cop in the film and Vinayak Joshi, who will also play a police officer. In fact, earlier on, while announcing Meghana’s casting Akash had said that she will play Shivaji’s boss in the film, so it looks like it is raining cops in this edition of the franchise.

In an earlier interview with us, Ramesh had said, “This is Case No.103 for Shivaji. Shivaji Surathkal was always meant to be a franchise. The idea was to have a desi Sherlock Holmes – if Sherlock Holmes was born in Karnataka, he’d be Shivaji Surathkal. With every film we wanted to tackle one case and we had the liberty to either go back in time or forward. This one is, obviously, set after Ranagiri Rahasya, but will have flashbacks to the lead character’s earlier life too. It is interesting to play Shivaji, because he has his own demons. He is on medication and goes crazy if he skips taking it. I had never done a role like that, which was fascinating to me as an actor. The quirks in the character also allows the screenplay a lot of bandwidth.”

Co-written and directed by Akash Srivatsa, the film is being backed by Rekha KN and Anup Gowda (Anjanadri Creations).

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