KPY Bala swaps the racket for the camera in Rematch

Cricket has carried Indian cinema’s sporting imagination for decades. Badminton, the racket most Indian kids actually grow up swinging in a corridor or a car park, has barely made it to the screen. Rematch sets out to fix that, billing itself as the first Tamil film built around the game, and it began shooting in Chennai this week with a pooja.

KPY Bala leads it. The Kalakka Povadhu Yaaru winner moved into films as a hero with Gandhi Kannadi in 2025, and the choice of his second project was personal rather than strategic. Bala played badminton seriously through his school years, finishing third at a state-level tournament, and he says it was that connection, more than the pitch, that made him pick this script after hearing several.

Opposite him is Dhanu Harsha, making her Tamil debut. A theatre artiste and model who is already a familiar face in Kannada films, she is also a competitive badminton player, which makes the on-court half of a sports romance less of a stretch than these films usually manage. The supporting cast includes Ilavarasu, Santhosh Prathap, Sha Ra, Sashank, Chitra Lakshmanan and Cell Murugan.

Rematch is the first feature for writer-director R. Vimal Kumar, a BOFTA graduate who assisted Radha Mohan on Kaatrin Mozhi and Bommai. The crew carries some weight: music by Achu Rajamani, cinematography by Arvi, editing by N.B. Srikanth, art direction by Pa. Mahendran and costumes by Anusha. Zinema Media and Entertainment’s Dinesh Raj produces alongside Prakash Seshadhri and G. Ravi Kumar, with G. Dhananjheyan handling creative and line production.

The shoot is planned as a single continuous schedule rather than the stop-start patchwork most mid-budget films run on, with the team aiming to wrap by October 2026.