Initially we had to dub, but now audience prefer subtitles: Vikram

MUMBAI: 'Ponniyin Selvan 2' is all set to hit theatres on April 28 and fans can't keep calm to experience the sequel of this iconic period drama.

In an exclusive interview with ANI, actor Chiyaan Vikram who plays Aditha Kaikalan in the movie has explained how the pandemic has helped movies become pan India. "The pandemic has been a curse to humanity and cinema has suffered a lot. From cinema halls being shut down for months and something impossible was a nightmare for everyone who belongs to the industry. But a chunk positive aspect that can be observed is that the audience expanded the list of content they used to watch due to the lack of new content from their favourite genre. No one can be more thankful to the Hindi audience for loving a dubbed movie than Vikram whose movie 'Aparichit' became a grand success among Hindi movie-watching audiences after the dubbed version gained popularity via television."

In a conversation with ANI, when asked about how the need to work in Hindi movies has declined due to the availability of dubbed versions which was not the case with superstars like Rajnikant and Kamal Hassan in the 80s and 90s.

Chiyaan replied, "I think it's thanks to the worst thing that happened to human race after World War 2 is the pandemic but it definitely helped us in terms of OTT as people were locked up in houses and didn't have enough content, they started watching other languages, initially we had dubbed films but now people actually say give us subtitles we want to watch original, which is beautiful as we are a beautiful country, we have so many languages and cultures, we started watching Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada."

Vikram also added about how the success of 'KGF' and 'Kantara' took place. Even after being completely different in terms of culture, people turned up to watch them and live the larger to-life experience.

Talking about his movie 'Aparichit' he said, "Also about what happened to 'Aparichit' I felt very strange it after 1 year of its release, really? Somebody had dubbed, but as dubbing has turned so good."

The actor also shared about how PS2 is a treat to watch, "We have been telling this everywhere like the first part was more like an introduction, all the characters coming together, as we touch every character like this is the character, this is the background, so now we had come to that mid part, now we have all the emotions, plot, suspense, so this is the interesting part."

Actress Aishwarya Lekshmi too added to the comment by describing PS2 as a more entertaining, more drama-to-watch kind of movie.

'Ponniyin Selvan-Part 1' was a cinematic adaptation of author Kalki Krishnamurthy's Tamil novel of the same name which was released in the form of a series during the 1950s.

The film stars Chiyaan Vikram, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Karthi, Jayam Ravi, Trisha, Lal, and Sobhita Dhulipal, among others.

The second part will take off from where it ended in the first part, where Ponniyin Selvan was facing his death as Queen Nandini (Aishwarya) jumps into the sea to save him