Exclusive: Mani Ratnam's Ponniyin Selvan plans are still on despite Soundarya Rajinikanth's ambitious web-series attempt

After the official announcement on Soundarya Rajinikanth's ambitious plans to transform the epic Tamil novel Ponniyin Selvan into a web series arrived two weeks back, there were reports that Mani Ratnam's idea of making a feature film on the same subject was dropped. Now, we have learned from bankable sources that the magnum-opus feature film is still on and Mani Ratnam is currently working on finalizing the cast and crew for the project. 

Chiyaan Vikram, Jayam Ravi are some of the names being considered by Mani Ratnam now. Earlier, Vijay Sethupathi was also in talks for one of the lead roles, but now we have learned that he has opted out of the film due to prior commitments. Sources say Mani Ratnam has asked everyone who joins the team to allocate a bulk call sheet of 6 months to the project to wrap up the entire shooting.

Mani Ratnam's last multi-starrer 'Chekka Chivantha Vaanam' starring Arvind Swami, STR, Arun Vijay, Vijay Sethupathi, Jyotika, Aditi Rao Hydari received both critical and commercial acclaim and it has given the much-needed confidence to the'Raavanan' filmmaker to take up 'Ponniyin Selvan', which has remained a long-elusive dream of a lot of directors in the Tamil film industry.