Kollywood is now abuzz with speculations about Mani Ratnam's upcoming film.
If names of Mammootty and Dhanush as lead actors in the ace filmmaker's project were doing the rounds earlier, latest reports suggest that Mani Ratnam has zeroed in on his "OK Kanmani" hero Dulquer Salmaan, besides Karthi and Shruti Haasan, as lead artists for his next flick.
There were also rumours that Mani Ratnam's upcoming film will be bilingual, in Tamil and Malayalam, but now it appears it will be a Tamil flick, with both Karthi and Dulquer sharing screen space together.
AR Rahman, who has composed for many Mani Rathnam films, will be the composer for this movie also.
Karthi had started his film career as an assistant director in Mani Ratnam's Tamil-Hindi thriller film "Aayutha Ezhuthu", which starred Suriya, Madhavan and Siddharth.
Apparently, the young actor was offered to play a role in the 2004 hit movie, but denied and chose to be part of the directorial team.
Karthi, who had a series of flops, had recently made a huge comeback with his performances in "Komban" and "Madras".
Meanwhile Dulquer's last release was Mani Ratnam's "OK Kanmani" and the actor had managed to impress Tamil audience with his looks and performance.
The young star is busy with back-to-back Malayalam projects. He is shooting for Martin Prakkat's "Charlie" and also looking forward to projects with Rajeev Ravi, Amal Neerad, besides the debut directorial of cinematographer Jomon T John.
Shruthi Haasan has a bunch of films in Tamil, Telugu and in Hindi. The actress is awaiting the release of "Srimanthudu" (Telugu), "Puli" (Tamil), "Welcome Back"(Hindi), "Yaara" (Hindi), "Rocky Handsome" (Hindi) and an untitled Tamil movie with Ajith.
