Lucky pair back

It has been seven months since Sachy-Sethu, one of the hit-screenwriter pairs in Malayalam cinema, decided to walk in different directions. They were together while penning the screenplays for five films including Chocolate, Robinhood, Seniors and Makeup Man. Later Sachy drafted the screenplays for films like Run Baby Run, Chettayees and directed Anarkali, while Sethu provided the scripts for Mallu Singh, Salam Kashmir, I Love Me, Cousins and the upcoming Achayans. Now, Sethu has hinted that he is all set to join with his friend Sachy again for a film.

“We recently discussed a topic which has been with us for the past few years. Now it is planned as a directorial of Sachy. We have decided to speed up that project and do it at least by end of the year after completing our other commitments. This project will see Sachy and Sethu working together again,” says Sethu, who was tightlipped about the other details of the project.

Sethu is noted for composing screenplays for only multi-starrers. Quizzed about the reason, he says, “I am a person who always thinks about entertainers and I am keen to portray stories on a big canvas. So I opt to depict the story with more than one character who all have importance in the storyline. In the case of Achayans also, we have more than four lead characters, all with equal importance.”

The writer points out that actors came to his films without listening to the complete screenplays, but the one-liners. “Nowadays, many actors accept films only after going through the final script. But in my case, actors came on board after listening to just the thread or the story. See, cinema is a process and scripting is just a part of it. The good part is that the actors with whom I have associated so far had the sense to grasp the soul of the subject even from the one-liner I narrate to them,” he says.

When it comes to Achayans, Sethu says that it was through Jayaram he reached director Kannan Thamarakkulam. “I have earlier narrated the story to Jayaram and it was he who introduced me to Kannan. I felt good vibes with him even during the first meeting. This movie is a comic one and at the same time, a thriller,” he says.

Sethu is now gearing up to wield the megaphone for his debut directorial, which will be the first non-multistarrer in his career. Mammootty will be the hero in the project. “Mammookka liked the subject and has shown the green signal. We are going to start the film, which is set against the backdrop of Kuttanad, by July. The movie will be bankrolled by Anantha Vision, the banner which produced my first movie as screenwriter — Chocolate. We are yet to zero in on the actors as well as the title. Though the film has a single hero, there will be three heroines,” he sums up.