Drishyam to scale the Great Wall of China

After Hindi, Tamil, and Kannada, Jithu Joseph’s Malayalam film to speak in Chinese

drishyam movie still

Two years after it broke Malayalam cinema’s box office records, and after successful adaptations into various Indian languages, Drishyam continues to make news. Jithu Joseph’s film will now speak in Chinese.

That is something which normally doesn’t happen with Indian films. It is the other way around -- foreign movies are adapted sometimes officially, mostly unofficially, into Indian languages.

Deal signed

“We signed the deal to sell Drishyam ’s Chinese rights,” Jithu told The Hindu on Friday, over the phone from Kochi, where he is shooting his new film Aadi .

“The discussions had been going on for a while, I had initially visited China along with producer Antony Perumbavoor and Suresh Balaji (producer of

Papanasam , the film’s Tami version), whose intervention helped us get a payment that was 10 times more than what was originally offered.”

Interestingly, it was not after the Mohanlal-starrer that the Chinese production company got in touch with its Indian counterpart. “They had seen the film’s Hindi version and they first thought I was Nishikant Kamat, who directed the Ajay Devgn starrer,” Jithu said.

In Sinhalese too

“ Drishyam has already been made into Sinhalese ( Dharmayudha ) and the talks are on for its Malaysian rights.”

Selling the film’s rights to a foreign production company means Jithu has the last laugh in the off-screen saga of Drishyam .

The director has had to fight a legal case and reply to legal notice, against charges of plagiarism, and allegations that the film had contained many similarities with the Japanese novel The Devotion of Suspect X , which had been made into films as Suspect X in Japanese and Perfect Number in Korean.

“I wasn’t bothered by those controversies at all,” Jithu said.

“I think Drishyam appealed to audiences outside Malayalam because its theme was universal. The film was appreciated by people who didn’t know Malayalam because we had released it in many centres outside Kerala with sub-titles. When they tell me that they liked the Malayalam version the best, I feel happy.”