Original Monster: Shivarajkumar's first look draws blood

The poster does most of the talking. Shivarajkumar is seated on a broken stone staircase with a curved sword hanging from one hand, two bodies sprawled at his feet, and a crowd watching from the red dark behind him. That is the first look of Original Monster, the title R. Chandru put in front of the country in Mumbai on August 28, and there is nothing coy about it.

The second image is the one that sets up the plot. Shivarajkumar comes out of a narrow lane on a Bullet, a sword strapped to his back and a bag stuffed with money slung across the tank, with bodies behind him and a mosque minaret in the distance. The word on the backdrop all evening was Blood Money. The actor is refusing to explain any of it yet.

“There is a lot of suspense in the first look,” he said. “Why is there money? Why is there a sword?”

He was less coy about the other question in the room. Salman Khan has a film called Monster with Vamshi Paidipally, aimed at Eid 2027, and a Kannada star arriving in Mumbai with a title that begins with the word Original invites an obvious reading. Shivarajkumar closed it down in a sentence. “The stories will be different,” he said, adding that there was no versus to be found here. “We’re all one.” Asked whether he would ever share a frame with Salman, he left the door ajar: if God wishes and everyone wishes, one day they might.

Chandru is writing, directing and mounting the film through RC Studios, with Yamuna Chandru producing and Anand Pandit presenting it in the north. B. Ajaneesh Loknath is scoring, AJ Shetty is shooting it, and Shivakumar J is on production design. Shivarajkumar and Chandru last crossed paths on a cameo in Kabzaa, which is a slim basis for a pan-Indian action film and exactly the kind of bet Chandru tends to make.

The character is the interesting part. Shivarajkumar is the lead, but the poster is framing him as the thing everyone else in the picture is running from, and he wants that read complicated. He calls it a simple subject told in an unusual way, and offered the line the marketing will almost certainly recycle: even the Original Monster has a heart.

Telugu actor Sunil was on stage, as were Geetha Shivarajkumar, Anand Pandit, Ajaneesh Loknath and AJ Shetty. A further casting announcement, a Hindi film name, has been promised and withheld, which is the standard way to keep a title launch alive for another news cycle.

Shooting starts on September 7, which makes this one of the faster turnarounds from title to camera in Shivarajkumar’s current run. He has a father-son drama with Abishan Jeevinth already rolling in Chennai, and Jailer 2 arriving in October. The sword and the cash bag will have to wait their turn.