Indian 2 - Pre-release Notes

The magnum opus Indian 2 feat. Kamal Hassan and a dozen other top names from Indian cinema, that has been in the making for over 5 years, bankrolled by Lyca Productions, directed by Shankar, and with music by Rockstar Anirudh, is ready to be showcased on the silver screens across India come July. The film has witnessed high expectations even as Kamal Hassan and Director Shankar are coming together after their previous outing “Indian” in 1999.

The music album which was released 2 weeks back had a muted response, with ardent fans of the previous movie franchise comparing it with AR Rahman’s musical on which 5/5 songs went on to become a hit. 

During the music release, Anirudh himself confessed that there was only one ARR and that none could replicate his work.

After much ado, the release date of the film has been fixed on 12 July 2023. A peak muhurtam day, the film is expected to witness packed crowds for the first 2-3 weekends with the diehard fans of the nearly 70years old Kamal Hassan, spanning 3 generations queuing up to theatres.

The film will be releasing in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi languages, making it a pan-India release. News is that there would be atleast 4,000 screens including stand-alone as well as multiplexes, many of them blocking all their screens for the magnum opus.

 

During the trailer release event held on 25 June, Kamal Hassan has said that there would be another franchise of the film - “Indian 3”, that would release in Jan. ’25. 

This is a somewhat similar strategy that was undertaken by Director Mani Ratnam for his “Ponniyin Selvan” which released in 2 parts in Sep. 2022 and in Jan. 2023.

 

The idea is to shoot an extended version of the film and eventually release the second part as a sequel, intriguing the interest of the audience, especially for die-hard fans of top actors and directors.

 

It is to be noted that Kamal Hassan’s Vishwaroopam made a similar attempt with a sequel a decade ago. Unfortunately, the second part didn’t cut the ice with the audience, which had a flashback of over 45 mins from the first part, while the first part itself witnessed violent protests by a section of Muslims in Chennai, which was enraged by the actor’s extreme portrayal of the community.

 

From the trailer of the movie, this is what could be understood. 

India has moved on a lot over the last 2.5 years since Senapathy (Kamal Hassan) fled to a foreign land after killing his own son on the Chennai airport runway due to his deeds pf corruption. In the current times, the character of Siddharth is that of a common man, who witnesses extreme corruption around him and is fed-up with the “system” as it were.

 

He sulks that everyone blames the system while no one gets in to cleanse the system.

Enter Senapathy, now well over 100 years old. He returns to India at the behest of Siddharth (looks like he is the grandson of Senapathy). 

Given the prevailing scenario in India (or because the actor is now a politician too!), he urges the young man to adjust to the “system”.

At one stage, Senapathy has to pull the knife back from its pouch to use it to teach a lesson to the wrongdoers, while also teaching his skills about the “varma style” to others. 

It is expected that the character would remain alive in version 2 of the film but would see his end eventually in version 3. 

We need to wait patiently until mid-July and thereafter until Jan. ’25.