Director Harish Shankar’s next film having Varun Tej in the lead has been titled Valmiki. Varun Tej would be playing the role of a gangster in it. The film has been launched recently amidst a lot of fanfare with the poster featuring gun and film roll. It will be bankrolled by Ram Achanta and Gopi Achanta under their banner.

Interestingly, Valmiki will be the remake of the hit Tamil movie Jigarthanda. Reports are that Harish Shankar is not planning it as an exact remake but will be making some changes to the script to suit the Telugu audiences. Devi Sri Prasad has been roped in to compose the tunes for this flick.

The original version in Tamil was written and directed by Karthik Subburaj and had Siddharth, Bobby Simha and Lakshmi Menon in the lead roles with Nassar, Ambika, Karunakaran and Sangili Murugan playing the supporting roles. The film fetched the National Film Awards for Best Supporting Actor for Bobby Simha and Best Editing for Vivek Harshan.

The technical crew of Jigarthanda included Santosh Narayanan for music, Gavemic U Ary for cinematography and Vivek Harshan for editing. The film was bankrolled by Kathiresan under his banner SMS Pictures. Made on a budget of Rs 10 crore, it fetched around Rs 35 crore at the box office.

It may be noted here that director Harish Shankar’s last film release was Allu Arjun starrer Duvvada Jagannadham. The film did not fare too well at the box office following which the director took time to finalise on his next. With reports that he will be directing Jigarthanda remake, movie buffs are excited to know what he has in store.

Incidentally, Jigarthanda was remade in Kannada with Sudeep bankrolling the venture along with Sathyanarayana. The film was directed by Shiva Ganesh and starred Rahul, Samyukta Hornad, and P. Ravishankar in the lead roles.

(Content provided by Digital Native)