How Dasavatharam was born
How Dasavatharam was born
It was revisiting Sivaji Ganesan's Navarathri where the thespian donned nine different roles that inspired Kamal Haasan's Tamil film Dasavatharam.
What started off as just an inspiration resulted in penning a story that led Kamal
to go beyond Navarathri. The result? Haasan in ten avatars just like Lord Vishnu!
Once Kamal shaped the basic elements of Dasavatharam, he approached his director friend K S Ravikumar (who directed him earlier) to direct the film. Ravikumar accepted the offer.
Then, the hunt for a producer for Kamal's dream project started. The only name both the writer and the director could think of was 'Oscar' Ravichandran, as he shared the same wavelength with the duo. Plus, he was the only one with the muscle to pull off such a huge project.
With the director and producer to back his project, Kamal devoted all his energy in writing the script. The first version was written in the United States when he was shooting for Gowtham Menon's Vettayadu Vilayadu.
Finally the shooting started in the US. The first 25 days of shooting were spent only on make-up tests. After that, the shooting of the film moved from one country to another, and the story moved from mythology to bio-chemical warfare.
The end result of two years of hard work was Dasavatharam, the costliest film ever made in India.
