Earlier, there were reports that Harish Shankar may wield the megaphone for the remake of ‘96 in Telugu. However, there is another buzz now that he will be remaking the hit movie Jigarthanda and has set the ball rolling. Reports are that the remake will be slightly tweaked to suit the Telugu audience but he will retain the core subject. Sources in the know say that Harish may be roping in Sharwanand to reprise the role done by Siddharth in the original.

It may be noted here that 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.

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 the Allu Arjun starrer Duvvada Jagannadham. The film did not fare too well at the box office following which the director is taking time to finalise on his next. With reports that he may be directing ‘96 remake and Jigarthanda remake, we need to see which of the two would go on to the floors first.

(Content provided by Digital Native)