"Myself and Jayendra were talking about making an anthology because the COVID-19 pandemic had hit several people in the industry and we wanted to raise funds for them. There were a lot of thoughts on it. But it took shape eventually," said Mani Ratnam while talking to Actor Ashwin Kumar about the upcoming anthology Navarasa and how it was born.
Ahead of the release of the nine-story anthology - which is presented by Mani Ratnam and Jayendra Pachapakesan - Ashwin Kumar interviewed the two producers and they revealed many interesting details on Navarasa as well as about the magnum opus production 'Ponniyin Selvan'.
Talking about how the anthology went the OTT way, the 'OK Kanmani' director said, "We wanted to take it to an OTT platform only. We spoke with Netflix for this anthology and took the decision of streaming it there. The stories are short and each have a run time of 35-40 mins each. If it was taken to theatres, it would run for four to five hours." Mani Ratnam also noted that this was the ideal way to release the anthology.
What if Mani Ratnam had directed one of the portions? Which emotion would he choose? Answering to this question posed by Ashwin, Mani Ratnam said he would choose all nine of them.
'Navarasa' is based on the nine rasas (emotions). It'll also be helmed by nine directors - Priyadarshan, Gautham Vasudev Menon, Karthik Subbaraj, Karthick Naren, Bejoy Nambiar, Rathindran Prasad, Arvind Swami (directorial debut), Vasanth S Sai and Sarjun KM. The anthology is set to release on Netflix on August 6.
Watch the below video for more details!