Joy Mathews’ ‘Shutter’ now in Tamil

After Jeethu Joseph’s Malayalam film Drishyam was remade in other Indian languages, another critically acclaimed Malayalam film is being remade in Tamil.

Shutter, actor Joy Mathew’s directorial debut, will soon be seen in its Tamil avatar. Directed by editor-turned-director Antony and titled Night Show, it has veteran actor Sathyaraj reprising Lal’s role in the original.

The trailer launch of Night Show was held in Chennai recently. Mathew is naturally elated. When he wrote the script two years ago he had not anticipated this kind of recognition for his story.

Shutter centres around two strangers — a family man and a prostitute — who get locked inside a room for two days.

The idea for this unusual story came to Mathew twelve years ago. “After my graduation I was driving an auto around for some time,” said the Sahitya Akademi award-winner.

“I met different kinds of characters and that prompted me to write the story for Shutter.”

But he never expected Shutter to be remade into other languages such as Marathi — it’s been remade by Malayalam filmmaker VK Prakash and stars Sachin Khadekar and Sonali Kulkarni as leads.

Nor did Mathew expect Shutter to travel up north for a remake in Punjabi. “The Punjabi film directed by Rajeev is complete and waiting for release,” he said.

Closer to home, Kannada director Shashikanth has secured the remake rights of Shutter in Kannada and Tulu.

“Talks are on for its remake in Telugu and Hindi,” added Mathew, whose acting career is also prolific — he has worked on 64 films in the last two years.

Shutter is an ordinary story that could have happened in any conservative society, he said.

“Told in a straight narration without any decorations, it’s what I would call a peanut candy and not a chocolate.”

Night Show, the Tamil remake, also features Anumol, Yuhi Sethu and newcomer Varun, and is produced by Think Big Studios.

Now this is one shutter that is hard to keep down.