Manjummel Boys

Manjummel Boys (2024)

മഞ്ഞുമ്മല്‍ BOYS

A carefree vacation turns into a desperate race against time when a group of lifelong friends must unite to save one of their own from a notoriously perilous, uncharted abyss deep within the Guna Caves.

Date of release
2024-02-22
TMDB
7.9 / 10 (103)
Runtime
2h 15m
Genres
Adventure, Thriller, Drama
Director
Chidambaram

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Guna Caves rescue

Manjummel Boys is a 2024 Indian Malayalam-language survival thriller film written and directed by Chidambaram. It is produced by Soubin Shahir, Babu Shahir and Shawn Antony under Parava Films. The film stars an ensemble cast, which includes Soubin Shahir, Sreenath Bhasi, Deepak Parambol, Balu Varghese, Ganapathi S. Poduval, Lal Jr., Abhiram Radhakrishnan, Arun Kurian, Khalid Rahman and Shebin Benson. Based on a real-life incident that happened in Guna Caves in 2006, the film follows a group of friends from a small locality called Manjummel near Kochi, who decide to have a vacation in Kodaikanal, which is affected when one of them becomes trapped in the Guna Caves.

Production

Inspiration for the film came to Chidambaram after hearing a real-life story told to him by his friend Shawn Antony where a group of boys from Kochi who went for a trip to Kodaikanal and while visiting Guna Caves, one of them fell down a hole to a depth of 120 feet. As rescue officials hesitated to descend, one of the boys climbed down a rope to save him. This prompted Chidambaram to consider for a potential film material.

The project was initially reported in January 2023 by The New Indian Express, which was the second of Chidambaram after Jan. E. Man (2021). Soubin Shahir and Sreenath Bhasi were roped to play the lead roles, in their fifth collaboration following Parava (2017), Kumbalangi Nights, Virus (2019), and Bheeshma Parvam (2022).

Principal photography commenced at Kodaikanal on 26 January 2023 and concluded on 17 July. The film was shot around 101 working days throughout multiple schedules. The film was also shot in Palani, Ernakulam and Kochi. The cave and its surrounding shown in the film was an actual set constructed in an abandoned godown in Perumbavoor by production designer Ajayan Chalissery.

About 90 percent of the film was shot in a replica of the cave. Realising the dangerous prospect in shooting in Guna caves which was thought to be impractical, they took the measurements and built a similar cave at a warehouse in Perumbavoor. Metal and fibre were used for the frame and the rocks. The height was about 40 feet and additional VFX was done to create further height.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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