Aashiq Abu’s Virus went on the floors at the Kozhikode Medical College recently. The film is based on the real life heroes who worked to contain the outbreak of the deadly Nipah virus in Kerala some months ago, to which 17 people succumbed. Sources close to the film unit say that the story is structured in such a way that it connects some of the incidents that happened during the Nipah virus outbreak in Kerala.
The film has an impressive line-up of actors in the cast including Tovino Thomas, Parvathy, Asif Ali, Rima Kallingal, Soubin Shahir, Dileesh Pothan, Chemban Vinod Jose, and Remya Nambeesan. Veteran actor Revathy has been roped in to play the role of the Health Minister.
It may be noted here that actor Kalidas Jayaram was initially roped in for a role in Virus but he walked out of the project citing date issues and has been replaced by Sreenath Bhasi.
While the cast is already impressive, the director has gone ahead and roped in actor Fahadh Faasil to play a cameo role in it. “It was important that prominent actors should be there to fill the canvas,” Aashiq said in an earlier interview to TNM. “It is going to be multilayered stories of different communities – the doctors, the patients, the cleaners and so on. But it would all happen in one time and one place,” he said. It is also not an anthology, as some speculated.
Aashiq had revealed that Rima Kallingal would play the role of Lini Puthussery, the nurse who was affected by the virus and passed away while treating the first of the patients and Tovino Thomas would play the Kozhikode collector UV Jose.
The scripting for Virus is done by Mushin Parari, Suhas and Sharfu. National Award winning cinematographer Rajeev Ravi will be cranking the camera for this venture with Sushin Shyam composing the tunes and editor Saiju Sreedharan taking charge at the editing table.
(Content provided by Digital Native)