Nishabdham was always supposed to be ‘small-scale’, according to the director, Hemant Madhukar. After re-watching the 1987 classic ‘Pushpaka Vimana’, Hemant had an idea to create a silent film where the main protagonist is both hearing and speech impaired. After bouncing off ideas with scriptwriter Kona Venkat, he suggested, by adding dialogues, the feature film could become an international project.
Hemant Madhukar’s first choice for his Indian International thriller ‘Nishabdham’ was actually not Anushka Shetty. In fact she didn’t even hear about the script from him either. Taapsee Pannu was Hemant’s first choice and she was initially on-board to be part of the ‘silent’ thriller.
Madhavan and Taapsee agreed to portray the roles of a mute artist and musician respectively, but Taapsee had to eventually drop out due to scheduling conflicts. Anushka, who heard about the script through Kona earlier, got interested in the project and was later cast to play the lead. Through a casting agency in the US, Hemanth was also able to rope in Hollywood legend Michael Madsen. With a 55-day shoot set in Seattle, the project slowly became bigger & bigger, and there was no looking back.
Since the movie was set in the US, Hemant said he didn’t feel right if the American actors started speaking in Tamil or Telugu. He shot the film with the native actors speaking in English as it was more natural and the lines can be either subbed or dubbed over later, depending on the audience.
The film was eventually shot simultaneously in English, Tamil and Telugu. The English edition is set to come out later next year, while the original Telugu and Tamil (Tamil version named ‘Silence’) will come out next month on Amazon Prime Video. It will later be dubbed in Malayalam and Hindi as well.
Nishabdham, starring Anushka Shetty, R Madhavan, Anjali, Shalini Pandey, Srinivas Avasarala and Michael Madsen, will stream on Amazon Prime on October 2.
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