Vijay Pays Final Respects to RB Choudhary, Embraces Jiiva at Producer's Chennai Home

Actor-politician Vijay arrived at producer RB Choudhary’s Chennai residence on Wednesday evening to pay his final respects to the man who launched him as a leading hero, sharing a long, silent embrace with Jiiva, the late producer’s son.

Choudhary, founder of Super Good Films, died on Tuesday at the age of 76 in a road accident near Beawar in Rajasthan. He was returning from a relative’s wedding when his vehicle reportedly lost control after cattle strayed onto the highway. Across a long career, he produced 98 films in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi, and is survived by his wife Mahjabeen and four sons, including actors Jiiva and Jithan Ramesh.

Vijay’s connection with the producer runs back three decades. Choudhary backed Poove Unakkaga in 1996, the film that gave Vijay his breakout solo lead, and went on to bankroll Love Today (1997), Shahjahan (2001), Thirupaachi (2005), and Jilla (2014), an unusually long actor-producer run by Tamil cinema standards. Vijay also shared the screen with Jiiva in Shankar’s Nanban (2012).

Tributes have come in from Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, Chiranjeevi, Mammootty, Dhanush, Suriya, Karthi and Vikram, all framing Choudhary in similar terms: a producer who consistently bet on first-time directors and young actors, and whose Super Good Films banner functioned for decades as a low-friction first door for the industry. The hug between Vijay and Jiiva, with both men in white kurtas at the front of a packed reception room, was one of the longer ones of the evening.