Meiyazhagan starring Karthi and Aravind Swami is slated to release in theaters on September 27, 2024. The movie written and directed by 96 fame C. Prem Kumar, is a production venture of Suriya's 2D Entertainment. On Saturday a promotional event for Meiyazhagan was held at Chennai, and actor Karthi revealed how the collaboration with director C Prem Kumar came about.

"Jai Bhim director TJ Gnanavel informed me that Prem Kumar has a story for me but is too afraid to approach me with it. So I myself messaged him, and he came along with a book (instead of a script narration)...I took three months to read the book because I was continuously shooting at that time. I must have gotten teary eyed atleast at six places while reading the book. 

 

I am a first generation city-bred so even while growing up, I spent most of my childhood and holidays in the villages. The sense I got while reading Prem Kumar's book was 'This is Tamil Nadu, this is us'. The book was written during COVID and I had read it post COVID. 

 

Meiyzhagan encapsulates the yearning for home, the yearning to go back to our roots...I do not know how Prem Kumar encapsulated the interest in the conversation of two people meeting after a gap, in his writing. He even says he wrote Meiyazhagan in six days "

Director C Prem Kumar while promoting the movie had previously said that he had written Meiyazhagan as a novel with Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan in mind. The filmmaker elaborated,

"Meiyazhagan story wasn't written for a film, it was written for a book. While writing I needed two extremely expressive faces as there are too many expressions, changes in it. The story takes places in a single night. Since I needed two expressive faces that could bring about the changes in a limited time, I thought of Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan for Karthi's and Aravind Swami's characters respectively.

 

My story is a conversation-oriented film. So it couldn't be narrated easily...So I had asked Karthi if he would be interested in reading the novel...It isn't a usual story with general commercial components. But Karthi was ready to do the film under his brother Suriya's 2D Entertainment." 

Karthi had confirmed at the Meiyzhagan pre-release event that the movie was shot only during nights. Meiyazhagan also stars Rajkiran, Priyanka Mohan among others, and has Govind Vasantha for music.