Ranjith Sankar is basking in the spotlight this season with Punyalan Private Limited raking in a good response. It’s an honest effort from Ranjith yet again, and it comes right after he won everyone with the heartwarming Ramante Eden Thottam.
Releasing a movie is not the end of the line for a director. He is up and about, with promotional activities. “No, not the time for relaxing yet, ” he chuckles. “I am working on the promotion part and trying to get the movie to people where it is yet to reach,” says Ranjith.
The movie, which released last week, was one of the most awaited sequels and the public seems to have accepted it with open arms. Ranjith says, “The response is more than what we expected and that is definitely something to be happy about.”
Of late, the audience had gotten used to mediocre sequels from both Hollywood and Bollywood and that is where Punyalan... shined. “The biggest challenge about bringing out a second part of the movie is to match the expectations of the first part. And the response has shown that we were able to do that to a good extent.”
Ranjith sheds light on how the story of Punyalan Private Limited came to be : “This is the second part where a lot of back work was done. It was actually planned as an entirely new project. As I thought more about the character, I felt it would be apt if it was a Thrissurkaran. Maybe, if the character was from any other place these dialogues would have come off as over-heroic or over-the-top. With the Thrissur slang it can be presented lightly, because the slang itself has humour in it. Then I thought ‘why not Joy Thakkolkkaran?’, instead of making an entirely new movie and bringing in a new Thrissurkaran? That is how the decision was made. The things Joy says in this movie are
massive but he was able to present it in a lighter tone, because of the place he is from .”
Punyalan... is one of those handful of movies that has personified Thrissur and this time the feeling has transcended to the masses on a larger scale. As a proof of it, Ranjith points outs, “While Punyalan Agarbattis ran very well in Thrissur in comparison to other places, the collection for its sequel has been the same across Kerala. Even outside Kerala it has made a good collection and it s much bigger success.”
Ranjith says he never writes a story and its characters keeping an actor in mind. “I did not write this story with Jayasurya in my mind. I do not do that with any actor because it might not turn out right if I think that way. The first important step is the story, the next step is how well it can be told. When I was musing over the best way to say this story, it dawned on me that the most effective way would be to bring back Joy Thakkolkkaran.”
‘Jayasurya-Ranjith Sankar’, moviegoers now know that this duo can create magic on-screen, so can we expect more fun from them? “ Yes, I would be happy to work with him again. But I do not know if there will be more of Joy Thakkolkaran,” he laughs and adds, “Even this story just happened by chance so I cannot say for sure.”
