Maatraan

Maatraan is an upcoming Tamil action thriller film directed and co-written by K. V. Anand which will be scripted by writer Subha. It stars Suriya, who would portray two different roles, a hero and a villain, while Kajal Aggarwal will be the heroine. Moreover, Maatraan comes with a very familiar and attractive tagline: "Sometimes the End is just the Beginning". The dubbed Telugu version of Maatraan has been titled Duplicate and both Maatraan and Duplicate will be released on Independence Day in India which is August 15th, 2012.

Production

Casting

During the post-production stage of Ko, K. V. Anand announced that he would direct Suriya again after the success of Ayan, further noting that it would be produced by AGS Entertainment and would begin once Suriya finished shooting for A. R. Murugadoss' sci-fi thriller 7aum Arivu.. Several actresses were considered including Taapsee Pannu, Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Sonakshi Sinha and Anushka Sharma, with Kajal Aggarwal eventually grabbing the role. Thara who played Karthik's sister in Agni Natchathiram was signed on to play Suriya's mother. Prakash Raj was dropped out of the film and he was replaced by Sachin Khedekar who played Amala Paul's father in Deiva Thirumagal. Daniel Balaji was said to be a part of the cast but he denied that he is a part of the film Acclaimed actor Milind Soman was also wrongly reported to be working for the film. It can also be noted that Actress Isha Sharvani has been roped in to perform an item song in the movie.

Filming

It was officially launched on July 22, 2011 in Chennai. The first schedule was held near the Pakistan border. In November 2011, the crew filmed a song in Latvia. A major portion of the film was shot in the Balkan region in countries like Croatia, Serbia, Albania, Macedonia and especially a large portion in Russia. The remaining portion is to be filmed in sets erected at Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad. In February 2012, the team left for US to shoot special effects scenes at the Stan Winston Studios.  Maatraan is the second indian film to use the performance capture technology after Enthiran(2010) in some of its super sleek action scenes. Isha Sharvani is reportedly to perform an item number on a song in the film, song titled "Theenda Theenda" was shot at AVM Studios. Recently, a duet song was shot at Wai, a village near Pune in Maharashtra, which starred Kajal and Suriya. CG scenes have been shot at Balu Mahendra studios. A song featuring over 500 junior artists and Suriya was shot in Jodhpur, touted to be the last phase of canning songs. The film will undergo post production work after this schedule. A shoot was reportedly done near Bhuj in Gujarat that lasted for five days for an important talkie portion in a part of the safe zone near the Indo-Pakistani border. Now, the crew will move to South Africa during the first week of June to shoot the last song remaining.