Busy weekend for Malayalam cinema

A number of releases are lined up for the last week of June.

Director Anwar Rasheed's Ustad Hotel, which has been scripted by Anjali Menon (who was the scriptwriter for Manjadikkuru) and has Dulquer Salmaan in the lead, goes to the censors today and will be released this week.

M A Nishad's No 66 Madurai Bus is another release for the week. Pasupathy, Padmapriya, Mallika, Makrand Deshpande and Thilakan play leading  roles.

Baddie turned comedian Baburaj plays the lead in director Harinarayanan's Naughty Professor, which is almost certain to hit the theatres on June 29.

Prithviraj starrer Simhasanam directed by Shaji Kailas, Santhosh Sethumadhavan's remake of Chattakkari, and Aneesh Anwar's Mullamottum Munthiricharum are the other films in the pipeline.

Malayalam star Suresh Gopi will play an important role in Tamil director Shankar's forthcoming film titled I, with Vikram and Samantha in the lead.

Produced by Aascar Films, the film is a big budget production with A R Rahman as the music director and P C Sreeram as the cinematographer.

Suresh Gopi has not been active in Malayalam cinema of late but has been hogging the headlines as the host of Kodeeswaran, the Malayalam version of Kaun Banega Crorepati.

The actor has done a couple of films in Tamil and some of his Malayalam blockbusters have been received well by audiences there.

Ranjith Shankar, who directed Passenger and Arjunan Sakshi, has started the shooting of his next film titled Molly Aunty Rocks, at Palakkad.

Revathy and Prithviraj play the lead in the film.

The film is about a middle-aged woman and an egoistic youngster named Pranav, played by Prithviraj. Revathy plays Molly Aunty, and has started shooting for the film.

Molly Aunty Rocks has been produced by Ranjith under his own banner, Dreams N' Beyond, and will be distributed by Prithviraj's August Cinema.

Sujith Vasudev is the cinematographer.