‘Rekhachithram’ directed by Jofin T Chacko is on its way to becoming the first blockbuster of the year. The movie has set new standards in Malayalam cinema, opting to delve into a parallel world with an alternate history set inside one of Mollywood’s most loved films. The film was also praised for its use of Artificial Intelligence, one of the firsts in the history of Malayalam cinema.

Jofin who began preparatory works for the film in 2018 said the scope of ‘Rekhachithram’ improved due to the boom of Artificial Intelligence in recent times and admitted that the film may not have been so well-received had it released five years ago. “We have used AI in some crucial scenes in the movie. When we first decided to do the film five years ago, I had a Plan A to present Mammootty, which did not involve any AI. Mammootty agreed to the first plan, but we later changed it after we realised the scope of AI in our film. I involved my friend and VFX specialist Andrew who has worked in films like ‘2018’. It was his confidence that helped me navigate this journey. Though it posed a lot of risks, we handled the scenes quite well, which is why it worked. Else, those scenes could have been disastrous to the movie,” said Jofin.

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The ‘Rekhachithram’ director said they removed at least four scenes involving AI from the film because it was not convincing. “To be honest, I think we could still do better with the AI scenes we used and achieved only 80 per cent perfection. However, AI poses huge risks and maybe this could be improved upon in the future. We removed three to four scenes involving AI since we felt it was not convincing enough,” he said and added that they conducted several trials before each AI scene.

Jofin said the idea to link ‘Rekhachithram’ with Bharathan’s classic ‘Kaathodu Kaathoram’ came naturally to him, which was developed by his co-writers John Manthrickal and Ramu Sunil and himself. “We were confident that the film would appeal to people like us who had grown up in the 80s. Also, we decided to do the movie since the songs in ‘Kaathodu Kaathoram’ appealed to all,” he said.

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Though they pitched the idea to Mammootty in 2018, the film posed a lot of challenges. “First of all, we needed to seek permission from all those who were involved in ‘Kaathodu Kaathoram’, especially since there were deceased people involved in our film. Everyone, including Mammookka, Kamal sir and Jagadish chettan and Bharathan sir’s son Siddharth were open-minded to this concept. This film would not have happened otherwise,” he said. He also said the support of producers Anto Joseph and Venu Kunnappilly were the backbone of the film.

Jofin is a hard-core movie buff and is an ardent fan of films that were made in the 1980s. “I watched almost every new release that was available in theatres in my hometown. I fell in love with cinema since I was a child. Today, it is part of my life,” said the director who previously helmed the Mammootty-starrer ‘The Priest’.

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