Prithviraj revealed that he would be working on a jovial piece of cinema, something that the Malayali industry has been missing of late

Malayali actor Prithviraj Sukumaran acknowledged the industry has been missing ‘happy films’, the reason being the contained environment within which everyone has been living over the last one and a half year.

“I think the primary reason for that is all the filmmakers, actors and producers — all of us — were forced to start thinking about contained films. Films that could be pulled off under these circumstances,” shared the actor.

“More often than not, when you start thinking on these lines, the genre that you start deviating towards is either a thriller or a dark satire happening in real space, like Joji. As is the usual practice when you start thinking about happy films, films that have a lot of actors, laughter, joy, comedy and music, you start thinking that this is big and the film needs a lot of resources. So, you don’t usually think on those lines, when you think what kind of a film you can pull off under the given circumstances (with the pandemic and lockdowns),” he said.

The actor made his directorial debut in 2019 with the film Lucifer, and is now all set to wield the megaphone again in the recently announced Bro Daddy. Besides him, the film will also be headlined by superstar Mohanlal. Prithviraj calls it a happy film that has been missing from Malayalam cinema lately.

“I was supposed to share my next directorial venture long back, which would have been a sequel to Lucifer. It was a much bigger film. If things would have been as we wished, then it would have been shot this year, but due to obvious reasons we couldn’t start. To me, it seems we are badly missing a happy film in Malayalam cinema over the past one and half year. All of the content we see in Kerala is dark. It’s either a murder mystery or a dark satire or an investigative thriller,” he said.

“Just when I was thinking there has been a dearth of happy films, these two writers came and narrated the script to me. I found it to be interesting, hilarious and more than anything, I believe it will be a really enjoyable, light watch. I casually narrated the idea to Mohanlal over a zoom call and he said we are doing this and the project took off,” recalled the actor-filmmaker.

Prithviraj made his Bollywood debut with 2012 film Aiyaa alongside Rani Mukerji, and was later seen in films such as Aurangzeb (2013) and Naam Shabana (2017). However, his presence in Bollywood has been rare ever since.

“I have gone through a few scripts in between but truth be told, Malayalam cinema is going through a purple patch and all of us find such great content here in Kerala, it would require something really good to come and invest that kind of a time in a Hindi film, though I look forward to it. I hope something good enough finds its way to me,” he expressed.

Currently, Prithviraj is gearing up for his next film, the dark mystery thriller The Cold Case. He shares that shooting for this Malayalam film was a new experience for him.

“This is going to be one or the first films I shot with the post-pandemic regulations. We were not used to social distancing on the set, being masked all the time. This film was shot strictly keeping all precautions in mind. Most of us would remember shooting The Cold Case because all of us were coming together for the first time post the pandemic,” he said while expressing his experience of shooting the film, which will soon stream on Amazon Prime Video.