Raj B Shetty winds up his fourth directorial and heads to the set of his Mollywood debut

In early December last year, Raj B Shetty had posted a casting call from the makers of Garuda Gamana Vrishabha Vahana for their second production. This was barely two weeks after he’d completed the shoot of his third directorial, Swathi Mutthina Male Haniye, which is the first home production for actress Ramya’s newly-launched production house, AppleBox Studios. Since taking off to Ooty and Mysuru for the shoot of Swathi Mutthina Male Haniye (SMMH), Raj has been on radio silence. His phone’s been switched off and he’s been incommunicado.

While it was widely believed that the filmmaker-actor would be busy with the post-production of SMMH or scripting his next, it turns out that he’s already finished shooting this film that he’s not announced to the public yet. Raj’s close buddy Rishab Shetty confirmed the same recently, during an interaction with a newly-formed association of Karnataka Cine Journalists. Rishab said that Raj had finished not one, but two films in the span of a couple of months and was then headed to Kerala to begin shooting for his Mollywood debut, Rudhiram.

Today, Raj posted images from the muhurtha of Rudhiram. He wrote, “Rudhiram starts from Today with the Pooja. Thank you for casting me as an actor @jisholonantony and #VS Lalan Excited to share the Screen with very talented @aparna.balamurali Thank you all.” Rudhiram reunites Raj with his composer Midhun Mukundan, who has worked on all of the actor-filmmaker’s directorials. Directed by Jisho Lone Antony, Rudhiram will eventually be dubbed and released in Kannada, Tamil and Telugu, beside the original Malayalam version. Raj, we hear, is quite excited about trying his hand at a Malayalam film, and taking lessons to get his dialogue delivery right.

As an actor, Raj is also committed to composer Arjun Janya’s directorial debut with Shivarajkumar. He is yet to make an official announcement about SMMH, which netizens have been speculating will be a direct-to-OTT release. Raj is in the lead along with Siri Ravikumar in the film, which is currently in the midst of a tussle over its title with veteran director Rajendra Singh Babu. More importantly, the question is, why is there so much secrecy surrounding his fourth film? Knowing Raj, it will most definitely be something to look forward to. Can’t wait!