Priyadarshan is a name to reckon with when it comes to comedy. The director’s comedy formula worked wonders at the box-office in HUNGAMA, HULCHUL and his last comedy, GARAM MASALA,but PriyaDarshan claimed his next film ‘Malamaal Weekly’ to be totally different from his earlier comedies.
According to the media, “It is the story of a villager who sells lottery tickets and finds that one of his tickets has won the jackpot. The winning ticket, however, is with someone else. The story unfolds as he diplomatically traces the lottery recipient and manages to get the ticket back.� The movie stars Ritesh Deshmukh , Reema Sen , Paresh Rawal , Om Puri , Arbaaz Khan , Shakti Kapoor , Asrani and Rajpal Yadav .
The film being inspired by a real life story: The backdrop of the film is definitely real. The film portrays life in a small northern village where drought and famine are a regular occurrence and water is a luxury. A number of villages in U.P and M.P, face an acute scarcity of water in summer when people buy water from well owners and the Thakuranis.
It is during one such drought-hit period that a villager wins a lottery ticket that brings a renewed hope to the village. The film has been shot in the Kadekudhi village of Tamilnadu but my art-director worked at length to recreate a village called ‘Lahori’ in Madhya Pradesh. Even the names of the buildings and the shops in the vicinity were changed to give it a northern look.”
Digression to the serious formula that backfired in KYON KI: I feel that it was the intensity of the film and the wrong timing of its release, during the festival season that led to KYON KI taking a beating at the box-office.
In fact, some people felt that it was far too serious and hard-hitting for the time when it was released. Ideally it should have had a solo release. Also it was released against my second film, GARAM MASALA, which only worked against the interests of the film. It is sad that the film did not meet with the expected response but I am definitely not going back on my decision to get back to serious filmmaking. I started out with VIRASAT and GARDISH, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t continue making films in the same genre.”