Director Lingusamy opens up about Kamal Haasan’s Uthama Villain setback, says his changes were not incorporated

In 2015, director-producer Lingusamy had backed the Kamal Haasan-starrer Uttama Villain, which resulted in a financial crisis for him after the film did not perform well at the box office. The film, written by Kamal Haasan and helmed by Ramesh Aravind, was produced by Lingusamy's banner, Thirrupathi Brothers, in association with Raaj Kamal Films International. Recently, Lingusamy opened up in an interview about the loss incurred due to the film and the aftermath of it.

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What did Lingusamy say?

Lingusamy, who accepted that Uthama Villain pushed him into a financially weak position, said, "I was promised (by Kamal Haasan) that a film would be made with a budget of Rs 30 crore. I was fully involved with Uthama Villain and it was my choice to back the movie. We wanted a film like Devar Magan and Apoorva Sagodhargal. He told me a nice script about a man rescuing his brother, who was to be played by Siddharth. But the problem is that he kept changing the script every week. He had done that before and seen success. But since I am a producer, it was a bit difficult for me. As an artist, he is par excellence and we also had plans to remake Drishyam. But he did not want to do that and went and did the same for another company."

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Lingusamy had also revealed that he had assured Kamal Haasan that he would not interfere in the making of the film but would let him know the corrections after finally watching it. "He also agreed, and we had given out the list of changes. But none of the changes were incorporated the next day and he had asked me to release it as is."

About Uthama Villain

Also starring K Viswanath, K Balachander, Jayaram, Andrea Jeremiah, Pooja Kumar, Nassar, Parvathy Thiruvothu, Urvashi and others, Uthama Villain is about an actor who is diagnosed with a brain tumour. He reaches out to his mentor to direct him while finding solutions to his personal problems. While the film received some favourable reviews, the release delays and issues affected Uthama Villain financially.

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