Premium19 years of Chandramukhi: When Rajinikanth delivered his greatest comeback
Chandramukhi gave Superstar Rajinikanth a break at a time when he was struggling to cater to the expectations of new-age audiences.
Last Updated: 05.00 PM, Apr 15, 2024
Superstar Rajinikanth's Chandramukhi turned 19 in April this year. It's a very important film in Rajinikanth's career for various reasons. One of the most significant reasons is that it gave him a break at a time when he was struggling to cater to the expectations of new-age audiences.
Rajinikanth remained at the top of the food chain throughout the 90s. In the 80s, he worked round the clock to build an enviable career in Tamil cinema and grow his fan following worldwide and later he became very choosy when it came to picking his projects to protect all the success he had gained through his sheer hard work.
Rajinikanth's strategy paid off as he delivered some of the biggest hits in his career during the 90s. From Baasha to Padayappa, Rajinikanth solidified his demi-god stature in the Indian film industry. However, his career faced a serious challenge at the turn of the century.
Rajinikanth's biggest on-screen comeback
Baba, which he wrote and co-produced, besides playing the lead role, tanked at the box office. It is touted to be the biggest upset in Rajinikanth's glorious career. With the commercial failure of Baba, many started claiming that it was the beginning of the end of Rajinikanth's stardom.
At that time, Rajinikanth decided to remake the Kannada hit Apthamitra in Tamil with director P Vasu at the helm. Apthamitra itself was the remake of the Malayalam classic Manichitrathazhu (1993).
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Rajinikanth was confident in the film's ability to strike a chord with his fans. During the audio release event of Chandramukhi, Rajinikanth refused to talk about the movie or his role in it. He noted that he would talk about it at the film's success event. In other words, he wanted his work to speak first. He revealed that he got inspiration while reading a contemporary interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita and decided to come back with a hit. "Baba didn't do well, so many claimed that I was shaken. I am not an elephant, but a horse. Elephants will take a lot of time to recover from a fall, but horses will stand up again immediately," Rajinikanth had said.
As he predicted, when Chandramukhi opened in cinemas on April 14 in 2000 to packed houses and went on to set the box office on fire. Chandramukhi is now streaming on SunNXT and OTTplay Premium.