Blockbuster Tamil filmmaker Gautham Vasudev Menon's Dhruva Natchathiram starring National Award-winning Tamil actor 'Chiyaan' Vikram with music composed by Harris Jayaraj is gearing up for a grand worldwide theatrical release on November 24 and the excitement for the highly-anticipated film is as big as it gets. The espionage thriller includes an ensemble star cast featuring the likes of Ritu Varma as the female lead, with Radhakrishnan Parthiban, R Radikaa Sarathkumar, Simran, Divya Dharshini, Munna Simon, Vamsi Krishna, Salim Baig, Sathish Krishnan, and Maya S Krishnan appearing in key roles. With Vikram's Dhruva Natchathiram continuing to be the talk of the town despite several release delays over the years, Gautham Menon sat down with Galatta recently to share his journey, while also opening up about the differences in the versions of the story he had initially narrated to Suriya and 'Superstar' Rajinikanth.
Explaining his initial approach to the Dhruva Natchathiram, Gautham Menon said, "I'm happy that stories like these are still relevant today. It's the same script and no changes have been made. When I narrated the story to Suriya first, there was an emotional flashback. It would revolve around the character's younger version, an eighteen or twenty-year-old, the protagonist's past, and where he's coming from. If he didn't carry his baggage, he wouldn't have joined this team. The senior person who sets up this team, what he says is, 'I need people with regrets. Some people like me and many who are living with regrets, I think they are the ones who should come into this team. They only will be able to take this journey forward.' So, there was a flashback for that, but we didn't shoot that in this film. I've left a loose end and if this film does well, I'll show that flashback in the next; this character's backstory. Otherwise, what I wanted to shoot, I've shot."
Gautham Menon then spoke about his narration of the Dhruva Natchathiram story to 'Superstar' Rajinikanth. He said, "I don't know whether you know about this, but I told this story to Suriya first and it didn't work out. We had a good, healthy discussion, but it didn't work out. I then narrated this story to Rajini sir. So, when it went from Suriya to Rajini sir, I met him after making changes for him such as the emotional flashback was not there, obviously. There were no love portions. Ritu would not have been there in this film actually. But, when I came back to Vikram, I decided to show a relationship between a man in his forties and a girl - a love, a romance, a friendship, you can call it whatever, I felt that should be there, and that's how she came into the film."
Watch Gautham Menon talk about Dhruva Natchathiram in the video below:
