Beast (2022)

Interesting facts

Beast is a 2022 Indian Tamil-language action comedy film written and directed by Nelson Dilipkumar. It is produced by Kalanithi Maran under Sun Pictures. The film stars Vijay and Pooja Hegde in the lead roles, alongside Selvaraghavan, Shaji Chen, VTV Ganesh, Ankur Vikal, Aparna Das, Sathish Krishnan, Shine Tom Chacko, Yogi Babu and Redin Kingsley. It is about an ex-RAW agent who seeks to rescue hostages in a shopping mall which has been hijacked by terrorists.

Production

In November 2019, it was revealed that Vijay had signed his 65th film following Master (2021), which he was currently filming. The following January, Kalanithi Maran's Sun Pictures was reported to fund the project, collaborating with the actor after Vettaikaaran (2009), Sura (2010) and Sarkar (2018). Multiple directors, including Magizh Thirumeni, S. Shankar, Sudha Kongara, Pandiraj, R. Ajay Gnanamuthu and Vetrimaaran were reported to direct it.

Murugadoss narrated the final script to Vijay in early August 2020. Following his approval, the team reported in mid-August 2020 that Thalapathy 65 will enter production soon, with an official announcement on the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi (22 August 2020), which did not happen. In an interview, Murugadoss stated that the script was not a sequel to any of his previous films, but an original one.

Vijay was initially said to receive ₹100 crore as a remuneration for the project, but due to the financial constraints owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, he decided to waive off 30% from his salary, thus getting ₹70 crore as remuneration. Maran insisted Murugadoss to reduce his salary post the failure of his previous directorial, Darbar (2020). But as Murugadoss refused his demands, Sun Pictures ousted him from the project in October 2020.

On 10 December 2020, Sun Pictures announced that Thalapathy 65 will be directed by Nelson, and Anirudh was also brought on board to score music; this project marks his third collaboration with Vijay and Nelson after their respective films, Kaththi (2014), Master, Kolamaavu Kokila (2018) and Doctor (2021). Manoj and Anbariv who were part of Murugadoss' proposed project with Vijay were retained for this film. R.

Nelson had parallelly worked on the film's script along with the post-production works of Doctor as the final script was to be drafted. During that period, he simultaneously began location scouting for the film and shared a few pictures from Russia through his Instagram page. Vijay was reported to play a "sharp and humorous" character.

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