Pin-drop silence enveloped the reasonably full hall at Kamala, a stand-alone theatre located at Vadapalani in Chennai, showing Tamil flick Karuppasamy Kuththgakaarar. The screen went blank for a moment and then filled with a larger than life hero in a smart, snazzy new look.
The management’ s impromptu action  they had just received the trailer of Shankar’s new movie Sivaji, starring Rajinikant  was followed by unbelievable frenzy. The audience went crazy at the glimpse of Rajinikant on screen and erupted into high decibel whistling and dancing.
The reaction was heart-warming for the producers of India’s most expensive film till date, made at an estimated Rs 80 crore. Two weeks to the movie’s release, expectations are soaring far higher than the summer temperatures in Chennai.
Kamala is one of the five theatres within the radius of one km that will show Sivaji from June 15. Giant cutouts and festoons will cover these theatres as the D-Day nears. On that day, Rajini’s fans will drench the cut outs with packets of milk and light camphor to do aarathi. The story will be repeated in several centers from Chennai to the US to Japan where the star has a huge fan following. Tech professionals from the state working in the US have filled their blogs with plans to do just the same.
The Boss?
What makes Sivaji special apart from the astronomical sum went into its making? For one, it teams up Shankar and Rajinikant for the first time  both have enviable track records at the box office. Add A R Rahman to the equation and that will explain people queuing up in front of the audio shops at five in the morning since the audio launch a month ago. Also, the film is backed by AVM, India’s oldest production house.
Scale is one of Shankar’s hallmarks. Factors like time and budgets simply do not matter to him. A song in Jeans, which featured Aishwarya Rai, was shot at the Seven Wonders of the World. Shankar’s focus is on his end product. So far, he has not failed the industry’s expectations  his only failure till date is Hindi film Nayak (a remake of his Tamil blockbuster Muthalvan).
His last film Anniyan, with Vikram in the lead, took his reputation to new heights. Instances like waiting for the orchids at Amsterdam to be in full bloom or painting a hill with portraits of MGR and Sivaji, as well as NTR and ANR (for the Telugu version), or painting a road to look like a silk sari spread over several kms helped the imagination of a generation of Tamil film buffs.
