Mollywood’s first-ever Superhero film, ‘Minnal Murali‘ is underway and has been under production for over a year now. The film production has faced multiple setbacks time and time again, but we were sure that this time, we would get to watch the movie in theatres, hopefully. That was until the film’s production got stalled again last week, for violating the Covid-19 protocols of the area the production was filming. After 18 months of production hell, we will not be surprised if the first Malayalam superhero movie releases on an OTT platform (Netflix according to the latest reports).
Production hell is right. Although there have been no issues with the cast and crew (as far as we know), most of the production issues have been caused by external factors. The film production started early last year before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Since the location they were shooting at was a containment zone, they couldn’t continue production until March 2021. Normally that would be ridiculous, but that was because their 50 Lakh Rupees film set got destroyed by right-wing groups – which set back the filming by almost a year.
And now, the filming has paused again because the production violated Covid-19 protocols. Here is what actually happened – Minnal Murali’ is being filmed in Kumaramangalam, Thodupuzha. But what the production didn’t know was Kumaramangalam gramapanchayat falls under Category D, where the Test Positivity Rate or TPR is above 15%, which makes a gathering of a large group of people (such as a film production) dangerous. Apparently, the filmmakers initially claimed that they have taken the permission to shoot, however, the police dismissed it later. The native villagers also protested against carrying out the shoot and violating the protocols, so the makers had no choice but to stop the shoot.
After all this, we wouldn’t be surprised if the production company either scrapped the entire production for a later date or complete the filming as soon as possible and release it quickly. While no one would like a “rush job”, we are more than happy to watch the film on OTT if it will release faster. For now, we will have to wait and see.
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