Priyadarshan on directing Mohanlal in Randamoozham: 'After Kunjali Marakkar...'

Malayalam filmmaker Priyadarshan seems to have had enough of making costume movies. He suggested that he was done with this genre. During a recent press conference on his upcoming movie Corona Papers, Priyadarshan was asked about the chances of him directing Malayalam superstar Mohanlal in Randamoozham. And Priyadarshan's witty response left everyone in splits as it underlined his unpleasant experience of making Marakkar: Arabikadalinte Simham. 

"No more Oozham’s. I stopped doing such movies after Kunjali Marakkar," said Priyadarshan.  

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Priyadarshan returned to the period genre after a long gap with Marakkar: Arabikadalinte Simham. His last film in this genre before Marakkar was Kaalapani, a historical film that shed a light on the atrocities committed against Indians by the British forces in one of the most inhuman prisons recorded in human history. The film starred Mohanlal in the lead role and it became a milestone in Indian cinema. However, Priyadarshan and Mohanlal, one of the most successful actor-director duos of Malayalam cinema, failed to recreate that success with Marakkar. Marakkar was released in cinemas in Mach 2021 and it received mixed reviews. The movie eventually tanked at the box office. 

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Randamoozham is one of Mohanlal's ambitious projects. In 2017, Mohanlal announced that Randamoozham, which is the big-screen adaptation of iconic Malayalam writer M. T. Vasudevan Nair's book, would be made in multiple languages at Rs 1000 crore. Mohanlal was set to play the lead role of Bhima, and filmmaker V. A. Shrikumar Menon was getting ready to helm the project. And businessman B. R. Shetty was supposed to bankroll it. However, after the initial publicity, the film didn't take off owing to many reasons and it was eventually shelved.