Exclusive! Unni Mukundan’s Malikappuram is a ‘mass’ entertainer with lengthy fight sequences: Abhilash Pillai

Malayalam actor Unni Mukundan will cap off his 2022, which began with Meppadiyan, with a film that he has said will have him in a role that will cherish forever. The movie titled Malikappuram is helmed by Vishnu Sasi Sankar and is all set to hit theatres on December 30.

Talking to OTTPlay, the film’s scriptwriter Abhilash Pillai tells us, “Malikappuram revolves around the relationship of an eight-year-old girl named Kalu and her superhero, Ayyappan. It’s a proper ‘mass’ entertainer and will have one of the lengthiest fight sequences in Malayalam cinema. It will have Unni in a ‘mass’ action role after quite some time.”

Though the movie has two child artistes, it’s not a children’s film at all, explains the scriptwriter. “Malikappuram has enough to keep audiences of all age groups entertained. It has action, emotions, five songs and divine elements; it has been packaged as a proper commercial film,” he adds.

The team had completed shooting the movie, which has the Sabarimala pilgrimage as the backdrop, earlier this year. “We have tried to shoot the film such that the audience is transported to the arduous journey to Sabarimala,” Abhilash says.

On the experience, he says, “We had to shoot for almost 50 days and majority of those portions were in the forests. The locations were in places where there were elephants and tigers. The children were also part of the shoot and I can say that it’s easily the toughest film I have been part of. Also, the result shows in the output,” he says.

Abhilash had scripted four of this year’s releases including Indrajith Sukumaran’s Pathaam Valavu, Roshan Mathew’s Night Drive and Amala Paul’s Cadaver. Ask him about his plans for 2023 and he says, “I will be scripting a few more movies and all of them are big projects. They are all ‘mass’ movies made on bigger canvases.”