In the Malayalam version of the popular Bollywood film Queen, actor Manjima Mohan will play the character Zama Nazreen. She will be reprising the role played by Kangana Ranaut in the Hindi film. The Malayalam version is titled Zam Zam.
Manjima, last seen in Malayalam cinema three years ago, is also working on another Mollywood project called Mikhayel. She would again be seen with actor Nivin Pauly, who she was seen with in her first film, Oru Vadakkan Selfie.
Queen, released in 2014, had not only been a blockbuster hit, but also Kangana the National Award for Best Actor. Following its immense success, Queen is being remade in all the four south Indian languages – Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu.
In Tamil, the film is titled Paris Paris, and it is Kajal Agarwal playing the female lead. In Telugu it is Tammannah Bhatia. Parul Yadav plays the heroine in the Kannada version of Queen titled as Butterfly. The film is directed by Ramesh Aravind.
The Telugu version was supposed to be directed by Neelakanta but he had walked out of it mid-way citing creative differences with the heroine and eventually the offer to wield the megaphone fell on Prashanth Varma. The film’s title has been officially announced to be That is Mahalakshmi which suggests the lead character is named Mahalakshmi.
Queen was directed by Vikas Bhal. Apart from Kangana, there were Rajkummar Rao and Lisa Haydon in pivotal roles. The film went on to win a slew of awards including the National Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi. The other prestigious awards that it had bagged include BIG Star Entertainment Awards, Filmfare Awards, Global Indian Music Academy Awards, International Indian Film Academy Awards, Mirchi Music Awards, Stardust Awards etc.
Being a commercial as well as a critically acclaimed film, there was a lot of competition to bag the remake rights in various languages.
(Content provided by Digital Native)