Was MC Jithin & Basil Joseph’s Sookshmadarshini Originally Pitched As A Bollywood Film? Director Reveals

Director MC Jithin’s film Sookshmadarshini was a theatrical success despite the widespread availability of high-quality pirated copies online. Starring Basil Joseph and Nazriya Nazim, the thriller is now streaming on Disney+ Hotstar. Interestingly, in an interview with OTTplay, it was revealed that the film was initially conceptualized as a Bollywood project before finding its way to Mollywood.

The journey of Sookshmadarshini began when a Bollywood producer approached MC Jithin to acquire the rights to his 2018 directorial debut, Nonsense, a sports comedy now available on Prime Video. While Nonsense didn’t perform well in the Kerala market, the Bollywood producers were confident that an adaptation would succeed. However, when the rights to Nonsense couldn’t be secured, Jithin presented a new script that would eventually become Sookshmadarshini.

According to Jithin, the producers were impressed and even booked dates with a leading Bollywood actress for the role that Nazriya later played. Initially, everything was progressing as planned, but the pandemic halted the project, leading the Bollywood producers to back out. The script then circulated among several producers in Kerala until Samir Thahir finally took it up.