Robot History - Part 1

There are many websites today are trying to outdo each other in reporting about Robot. In the process, there is lot of contradictory information available on the web. Robotrajini.com would like to present you with chronology of events that led to today’s developments.

In 1996, Shankar and Kamalhassan collaborated to make Indian movie which turned out to be a runaway hit. This movie earned Kamal his third national award. This movie was dubbed in several regional languages and became a sensational hit in other languages as well. The Hindi version Hindustani was a big hit too, which brought recognition for Shankar at the national stage. Emboldened by the success of this movie, Shankar wanted repeat the magic with same team. The seed for Robot was sown. Famed tamil novelist Sujatha was consulted on this project and he reportedly played a big role in shaping up the screenplay. Around 2000, this idea somewhat started taking shape.

Media Dreams Pvt Ltd, part of now defunct Chennai based Pentamedia Limited of which Sujatha was a partner agreed to produce the movie. An announcement was made to this effect. Sushmita Sen was Shankar’s first choice for this movie but she turned down. Preity Zinta was signed up to do the female lead.

http://www.apunkachoice.com/scoop/bollywood/20010630-0.html

A.R.Rehman was the obvious choice to play the background score for Shankar’s movie. He said this to an interview that he gave to a tamil weekly:

http://home.no.net/satheest/html/a.r_rahman.html
While the movie was in the preliminary planning stages, Kamal became busy with Aalavandhan (Hindi Abhay) and Shankar was making Hindi Nayak (remake of Tamil Muthalvan) with Anil Kapoor. It was agreed once these two movies are complete they will commence their work on Robot.

However after the disastrous box office performance (despite critical acclaim) of both Aalavandhan & Nayak things changed upside down. Kamal did not want to risk another experimental movie after Aalavandhan. Shankar was in the same mood. Media Dreams was reluctant since it is hard to get financiers to back such a mega project especially after such huge box office disasters. All concerned parties agreed that the time is not ripe for such a project. They decided to shelve the project at least temporarily.

Since Media Dreams paid an advance to Kamal for Robot, Kamal made Pammal K Sambhandam for that company. Shankar wanted to make a movie with A M Ratnam again, to help him after the huge losses he suffered in making Nayak. At this time, Rajinikanth was consulting many directors for his next movie. One of them was Shankar and he reported discussed Robot (see below) with him. While the Super Star was impressed with the story, it was said that he did not want to work with AM Ratnam, and that he preferred to produce the next movie himself. He went on to make Baba.

Shankar got busy with Boys for A M Ratnam. All the interviews that followed one question that everyone had was, What happened to Robot? Sujatha in his series Kattrathum Pettrathum in Anandha Vikatan, was quite hopeful that this movie was made one day with Kamal as hero and Shankar as it director. There was even a morphed photo of Kamal as a Robot. In another interview Shankar said there is only person can star in his dream project, and that person is none other than Kamal hassan.

I will write more tomorrow…