7 interesting facts you should know about Kamal Haasan’s ‘Uttama Villain’

Image courtesy: The movie Facebook page
Raghavendra M Raghavendra M folomojo staff

During the audio launch of the film in Chennai on March 1, Kamal Haasan surprised his daughter Shruti Haasan by calling her on FaceTime and revealing that she was being watched by over a thousand people at the audio function. He later surprised the audience by launching the audio in the form of an app instead of conventional CDs. That’s Kamal style of continuous innovation.

Here are six more interesting facts about the veteran actor’s upcoming film ‘Uttama Villain’.

  1. The title

Titled ‘Bitter Chocolate’ during pre-production, the film was later rechristened ‘Uttama Villain’, which means “virtuous villain”. Well, now that makes us really interested.

  1. The plot

Nothing much about the plot is known as yet. However, Kamal plays a dual role, with one character being an eighth century artist named Uttaman, while the other is a modern-day film actor named Manoranjan. So there must be some link between the two periods.

3. The director

Kamal Haasan has written the story, screenplay and the major part of the dialogues. Initially, he had agreed to handle direction as well. However, his friend and actor Ramesh Aravind took over the task later. Ramesh Aravind is an award winning director in Kannada, but he is debuting in Tamil with ‘Uttama Villain’. Ramesh has previously directed Kamal in `Rama Shama Bhama’, a superhit movie in Kannada. So it’s no surprise that Ramesh puts in a cameo appearance in this production.

  1. Music and lyrics

Source: FilmySouth
Source: FilmySouth

Ghibran has composed the soundtrack and the background score of the film. The soundtrack has 17 songs including seven background scores. Ghibran has previously worked with Kamal Haasan in Vishwaroopam II. Meanwhile, Kamal has not only written the lyrics, but has also sung 3 songs.

  1. K Balachander’s last film

Uttama Villain is the last film of legendary director K Balachander, who passed away recently. Revered as the mentor of the Tamil superstar in real life, Balachander has also played the mentor’s role in the film. Apart from him, the veteran Telugu industry director K. Vishwanath also appears in an important role. He was the director of Kamal’s evergreen films ‘Swati Mutyam’ and ‘Sagara Sangamam’.

  1. Controversy

It has been alleged that the first look of the film was a copy of a photograph taken by French photographer Eric Lafforgue. However, Kamal Haasan clarified that the makeup was done by a practitioner of Theyyam, a 1000 year old South Indian art form. He further said that the image was not that of a mask, but was make-up that took a full 4 hours to complete.


‘Uttama Villain’ stars Pooja Kumar, Andrea Jeremiah and Parvathi as female leads. Parvathy Nair, Urvashi, Jayaraman, M.S Bhaskar and Nassar are doing the supporting roles. Actress Gautami Tadimalla has handled the costume designing, while the film is produced by popular director N. Lingusamy.