Naslen, Mathew Thomas’ Neymar is a ‘mass’ film with songs, action and comedy: Sudhi Maddison | Exclusive

Over the past years, Mollywood had discovered the box office potential of the young adult genre with movies such as Thaneer Mathan Dinangal, Super Sharanya and Jo & Jo. In the upcoming movie Neymar, debutant filmmaker Sudhi Maddison aims to mix the best of both worlds – with a varied cast featuring veteran actors Vijayaraghavan, Johny Antony and Shammi Thilakan, and youngsters Naslen and Mathew Thomas.

In an exclusive chat with OTTplay, Sudhi reveals the reason for his casting and what the audience can expect from the movie, which is scripted by Adarsh Sukumaran and Paulson Skariah.

“Neymar is a movie that people of all age groups can watch. The first look poster that we released recently reflects the mood of the movie, which is a complete family entertainer that also has ‘mass’ sequences, action and songs. In fact, there are 8-9 songs in the film,” he says.

Vijayaraghavan and Shammi Thilakan play the fathers of the characters essayed by Naslen and Mathew Thomas, respectively. “Johny chettan is the common friend of both the fathers in the story, which evolves in Kerala and Tamil Nadu,” explains Sudhi.

Ask him about the vibe on the sets with both the seniors and youth, and Sudhi says, “I have always wanted to make use of our senior actors’ talents by giving them roles that they haven’t done before. For instance, the characters in Idukki Gold. So, the idea of casting veteran actors was to give them characters that can have ‘mass’ moments that will be applauded in theatres. All three of them are performers and this movie has the boys on one side and the dads on another.”

The director also explains that all of them loved the script and were extremely excited to shoot the film. “The energy on the sets was great and that has reflected in the output as well,” he says.

On the connection of the film’s title Neymar and the Brazilian footballer, the director explains, “It’s not a football movie at all. The sport does have a small part of play as that’s what kicks off the plot. We will be revealing more about the relevance of the title in the coming days.”

The team are currently planning to release the film in Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi in theatres in March.