Why did you decide to have Mohanlal as Major Mahadevan?
It just happened. When I wrote the script, I didn't know who would act as Major Mahadevan because I could not imagine myself directing a film with Mohanlal as the hero. After all, I am only making my first film. I didn't want to exploit our friendship. My intention was to make a small film with newcomers.
But, when I narrated the story to Sunil Shetty, while we were making Main Hoon Na, he said he wanted to make it in Hindi. Sunil Shetty and Atul Kulkarni were to be the buddies in the film. Popcorn (Sunil Shetty's production house) was to produce it. Then, his Rudraksh and another film flopped, and he told me he wouldn't be able to make it.
I had written the script in Hindi first. When I narrated the story to many people, they asked me -- where are the songs? Where is the item number?
One day, I decided I was going to ask Mohanlal to act in my film. I drove from Chennai to Kannur where he was shooting at the time. I narrated the story to him and he agreed. The film has dialogues in Hindi, Malayalam and Tamil though. For example, while Mohanlal speaks in Hindi to other army people, he speaks in Tamil to Jeeva and in Malayalam to other Malayali jawans. You can call Keerthichakra a multilingual film.
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