Superstar Rajnikanth Has His ENTHIRAN Follow-up in RANA

Ever since the spectacular success of Enthiran (Robot) in Indian and around the world, the Indian film industry has been wondering what Superstar Rajni will do to follow it up.  Enthiran broke every record in the Indian box office, biggest opening, highest grosser overall after only three weeks in theaters, and now the film has gone viral thanks in part to a ten minute collection of action sequences strangely dubbed over in irritating Russian making the rounds at geek websites all over the place.  In fact, I just found out yesterday that our friends in Austin at the Alamo Drafthouse are even planning a screening (multiple?) based on the reaction across the Internet to that youtube clip.

I hate to say I told you so, but a few of you read my review back in October, and, well...  I told you so.  The movie is amazing.

Anyway, back to the new news:  Eros Entertainment, one of the biggest Hindi film studios and film distribution companies in India has announced that they are partnering with Ocher Studios, run by Superstar's daughter Soundarya, to produce Rana, the next Rajnikanth film.  On board to direct is RS Ravikumar, who is also responsible for former Tamil box office champ Dasavatharam, starring Kamal Hassan in ten roles.  We took some notice of that film here at the site, but I don't think anyone here at ScreenAnarchy every actually saw or reviewed Dasavatharam.  In that film, Hassan played ten different characters, and apparently a few characters got left on the drawing board and Ravikumar is planning on using three of them with Rajni in this new venture.

There are precious few details about the film apart from what I mentioned above.  No other actors are reliably attached the the project, and there is no real plot summary out there, but any Superstar Rajni film is an event, so I'm sure this one will have no expense spared.

What is kind of interesting is the way this is coming together.  A while back I reported on Sultan: The Warrior/Hara, which was to be Rajni's next project, a CG animated period piece starring Superstar and directed by his daughter Soundarya, who is a special effects pro in Chennai.  We even posted some test footage.  Eventually, news stared to trickle down the grapevine that Hara was going to include a thirty minute live action sequence starring Rajni and directed by...   RS Ravikumar.  So there are rumors that Hara has been scratched, or at least indefinitely delayed, and that the live action sequence has now evolved into a full feature.  Eros and Ocher deny this, saying that Rana is from a brand new script, but it would be a coincidence if there were no relation at all between the two projects considering that all of the major players from Hara are involved in Rana.  Also on board is Rajni regular and Oscar winner A.R. Rahman composing the score.

I'll keep my ears to the ground on this one, I never miss Superstar Rajni news.