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The Malayalam film 2018, featuring a number of stars including Tovino Thomas, Kunchacko Boban, and Vineeth Sreenivasan, and directed by Jude Anthany Joseph, is having a dream run and moving toward the Rs 100 crore club, a rare feat for a Mollywood movie. Reports suggest that in 10 days the movie has collected Rs 40 crore in the country and crossed Rs 93 crore globally. And coming as it does at a time when The Kerala Story is attracting nationwide attention, people close to the Malayalam film industry are saying that 2018 is ‘the real Kerala Story’ and not the one that claims to be one.
The film is centred around stories of humanity triumphing over adversity in the backdrop of the 2018 floods that devastated parts of Kerala. It is the second Tovino project to attract national attention and get glowing praise from audiences after the 2021 superhero movie Minnal Murali.
Tovino, incidentally, volunteered his services for flood relief back in 2018. In the film, he plays a young man who leaves the Indian Army using a fake medical certificate and redeems himself during the floods. During a promotion of the film in Mumbai, the actor said that he had seen millions of people come together during the floods – not 3 or 32,000 – in a reference to the number propagated in The Kerala Story as women joining ISIS terrorist camps. Tovino said that though he had not seen the movie, he saw the trailer and it was not the story of the state he grew up in.
Watch: Trailer of 2018
2018 features an ensemble cast including top Malayalam talents, notably Asif Ali, Kunchacko Boban, Vineeth, Narain, Lal, and National Award-winning actor Aparna Balamurali, who plays a TV reporter.
The movie, which was released on May 5, raked in around Rs 5.18 crore on its ninth day in Kerala alone, which is an all-time record in Mollywood history. The film is reported to be getting a standing ovation in theatres across the state. The worldwide collection is reported to be more than Rs 80 crore in the first nine days.
The film is produced by Venu Kunnappilly, CK Padma Kumar, and Anto Joseph under the banner of Kavya Film Company and PK Prime Productions.
(With IANS inputs)
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