Mersal Comes Back for CM Vijay's First Birthday Without a New Film to Wait For

For close to thirty birthdays, a Vijay fan knew the drill: a new film, or at least a first look, timed to land around June 22. This year there is no new film, and there will not be another. Vijay closed his acting career to enter politics and now sits as Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister, which makes June 22 his first birthday in office and the first in living memory with nothing fresh on a marquee. So the fans are reaching for the next best thing, and the distributors are happy to hand it to them.

Mersal, the 2017 blockbuster, returns to theatres on June 19, three days ahead of the birthday. K Kennady is putting it out through KP Films and KP Priyanka Productions across roughly 100 screens in the City Chengalpattu belt, covering Chennai, Chengalpattu, Kanchipuram and Tiruvallur. A re-release on this scale is no longer a novelty in Tamil Nadu, but the reason behind this one gives it a different weight. This is not a victory lap for a working star between projects. It is a substitute for the thing that is not coming.

Atlee built Mersal around a triple role, with Vijay playing a father and his two sons, and the film still holds up as the loud, generous kind of mass cinema that birthday crowds want. The centre of it is Maaran, a doctor who charges his patients next to nothing while moonlighting as a magician picking apart corruption in private healthcare. His arrest cracks the film open, and the past that spills out turns a commercial revenge drama into a pointed argument about what medicine costs when it is run for profit. The rural-father stretch, where Vijay swings between comedy, sentiment and a fight scene without visible effort, is the part most people remember.

The supporting bench was deep: Samantha, SJ Suryah, Kajal Aggarwal, Nithya Menen, Sathyaraj and Vadivelu. AR Rahman scored it, and “Aalaporaan Tamizhan,” his Tamil-pride anthem, still gets a theatre on its feet, which is exactly the reaction a re-release is banking on. Backed by Thenandal Studios as the house’s hundredth production, Mersal cleared close to Rs 200 crore worldwide and went on to become one of the first Tamil films to land a theatrical run in China.

There is a small irony in the timing. Mersal once picked a fight with the establishment over its lines on GST and digital payments, and the controversy only fed its box office. The man who delivered those lines now runs the state. Fans buying tickets on June 19 will be watching a younger Vijay take aim at the system from the inside of a story, a few days before the older one marks a birthday from the inside of the government. It is the closest thing to a new release they are going to get, and for now it is enough.

Vijay’s old films have been doing steady re-release business since he left the screen, from Friends returning in 4K to the regular birthday revivals. The difference this year is that the Chief Minister himself is the reason the halls fill, and no longer the reason a new one is being shot.