Exclusive! Tovino, Basil Joseph’s next is a mystery about a gang of Bangalore-based friends: Vineeth Kumar

Before the hype of Minnal Murali’s Netflix release and its superlative feedback, Tovino Thomas and Basil Joseph had collaborated for another film – as actors. The untitled film, which is helmed by actor Vineeth Kumar, is in its final stages of post-production and the filmmaker lets us in on the details of the movie.

In an exclusive chat with OTTplay, Vineeth Kumar talks about how he decided on the movie, which is written by Thanmatra actor Arjun Lal, and Virus co-writers Suhas and Sharfu, as his second directorial after the Fahadh Faasil-starrer Ayaal Njanalla.

“Arjun had approached me when I was working on another script for my second directorial,” says Vineeth. “I had seen his movies and so I agreed to meet him. When he pitched the idea and I liked it, the only demands I had was that it had to be co-written by Suhas and Sharfu, and that Shyju Khalid had to be its cinematographer.”

While the director says that they didn’t have plans to shoot the movie soon, as soon as he pitched it to Shyju, the cinematographer got excited about the subject and decided to co-produce it with Samir Thahir and Ashiq Usman. “So, I decided to keep aside the script I was working on and then go ahead with this movie because it had a lot of interesting elements,” says Vineeth.

Ask him about the subject and he says, “We don’t want to reveal too much about the film. What I can say is that it revolves around bunch of friends who are based in Bengaluru and it shows their lives. The film explores aspects that we haven’t seen before in Malayalam cinema. It’s a story that happens between these friends and how a mystery creeps into it.”

Apart from Tovino and Basil, the film also has some of the best young talents in the country including Darshana Rajendran, Tamil actress Sanjana Natarajan of Sarapatta Parambarai fame, Arjun Lal and Arjun Radhakrishnan, who had starred in Pada, Rocket Boys and Jhund.

“We were lucky to get a bunch of exciting young talents as part of the cast. We had actually spent a lot of time looking for actors who would be apt for each role. Even for Arjun Radhakrishnan’s role, we thought of different ways of shaping that character till he came onboard,” says Vineeth.

The actor-director is also all praise for Tovino’s acting in the film. “I am sure it would be his career-best performance. After the first edit, I called him up to tell him that he has done complete justice to the character,” he says.

The movie was shot in Bengaluru and Mumbai last year. On whether the movie is a theatrical or OTT release, Vineeth explains, “Justin Varghese is composing for the film and we are now busy with that. The final post-production phase will begin next month and we will take a call on the release only after that.”

Meanwhile, Tovino is currently shooting for Khalid Rahman’s Thallumala, which is also produced by Ashiq Usman. The actor has also completed filming Vishnu G Raghav’s Vaashi, which has Keerthy Suresh as the female protagonist.

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