Ajith's AK64 is Dare Devil, and Shalini is producing it

Ajith Kumar’s 64th film has a title, and the more interesting line on the poster is further down. Dare Devil was announced at 5.41pm on Monday, the name spelled out across eight tumbling white dice in English and in Tamil against a flat red field, with Ajith billed in and as the character. Adhik Ravichandran writes and directs, Anirudh Ravichander scores. And the producer credit reads Shalini Ajithkumar, her first, under a banner called BraveHearts Production that did not exist in public until this evening.

That solves a problem the film has been stuck on for over a year. AK64 was announced last year and never rolled a frame, and the reason doing the rounds was money: Ajith’s fee had run past what the production houses circling the project were willing to carry. Sun Pictures was reported to be in talks and never confirmed anything. Other reports put Ajith himself in the producer’s chair. The answer on the poster is neither. The family has started its own banner and is paying for the film out of it, which is the cleanest way to end a stand-off over a quote nobody outside the house wanted to meet.

Adhik framed the announcement around the length of Ajith’s career rather than the title. “34 years of breaking barriers, inspiring millions, and redefining stardom. A journey built on passion, perseverance, and unmatched charisma,” he posted, before thanking Ajith for the trust, Shalini as producer, and the crew by handle. He had teased the reveal about an hour earlier with nothing more than the time on it.

This is the second Ajith film for Adhik after Good Bad Ugly, the 2025 hit that turned a director with a patchy record into the safest pair of hands the actor had worked with in years. Adhik has already said this one is built differently. Good Bad Ugly was made purely for Ajith’s fans, he said earlier this year; AK64 would be an action entertainer with a screenplay solid enough to pull families in alongside them. A title that puts the star in and as the role, and a poster leaning on dice rather than a face, suggests he is still writing to the persona rather than away from it.

The bottom strip of the poster carries names without designations, and most of them are the Good Bad Ugly bench: Abinandhan Ramanujam, Suresh Chandra, Vijay Velukutty, Supreme Sundar, Anu Vardhan, Kalyan, Subramanian Narayanan, Suren and ADFX Studio. On the last film that meant Abinandhan on camera, Vijay Velukutty cutting, Supreme Sundar on stunts and Anu Vardhan on costumes, though the poster stops short of confirming the roles this time. Anirudh, working with Ajith again, is the one credit the poster spells out in full.

Nothing has been said officially about the cast beyond Ajith. Pre-announcement chatter has put Sreeleela in the lead and Mohanlal in talks for a significant role, and has the shoot starting soon on the back of completed pre-production and location scouting, but none of that has come from the production. Expect the casting to be released in pieces, the way the title was.

Good Bad Ugly opened on 10 April 2025 and Vidaamuyarchi a few weeks before it, and Ajith has spent most of the time since on a race track rather than a film set. Dare Devil has no shoot date and no release date attached to it yet. What it has, for the first time since the project was floated, is a producer’s name printed under the title.