Stars & Directors makes most of a forced holiday

Kollywood directors have run into a wall after the unofficial strike in the industry started. The TFPC-FEFSI dead lock over wage revision has brought the industry to a grinding halt.

Initially, some directors went outside of Tamil Nadu to shoot their films. AR Murgadoss shot for Thupakki in Mumbai, while Selvaraghavan shot his Irandam Ulagam in Hyderabad. Gautham Menon also shot for Neethane En Ponvasantham in Hyderabad.

Suddenly FEFSI appealed to their colleagues outside the state who stopped cooperating with these filmmakers and shooting ended abruptly. Most of the top directors did not want to get sucked into the politics of the unions, so quietly decided to go on a location hunting for their future projects.

Shankar, who attended Harris Jayaraj's concert in Dubai, was actually in UAE looking for fresh locations for his new film. He visited all the emirates like Sharjah, Abu Dhabi and few other places for his Kamal- Mohanlal- Prabhas multi-starrer. Long before the strike, Shankar had gone to China for location hunting.

Selvaraghavan is now in Brazil hunting for virgin locations along with his cameraman Ramji. Speaking from Brazil, Selva told Us : "We have found some awesome locations, where will be shooting with Arya and Anushka."

AL Vijay for his Vikram actioner Thandavam has already completed a recce in US. Now he is going along with his hero Vikram who will do some make-up tests in Los Angeles. The shoot of the film is scheduled to happen sometime in March.

AR Murgadoss has tweeted that he would like to do a small documentary film during the strike period. Vishnuvardhan is out of Chennai giving finishing touches to his Ajith-Arya-Nayanthara script for producer AM Ratnam. Mysskin is busy along with his music director K composing all the four songs for Mugamoodi.

Meanwhile the top heroes are also on a forced holiday. Vijay is going around Tamil Nadu promoting his Nanban aggressively in small towns. Ajith is spending most of his time on his favourite hobby of aero modelling. Suriya the complete professional is preparing for his game show on Vijay TV. Karthi is in serious discussion with director Rajesh on how to better the script for their next movie. Dhanush is practicing for live converts,marketing of 3 and has managed tie-up's with big brands. Simbu is in LA, trying to work out his anthem.

Now everything hinges on the strike ending, for the actors and directors to fulfil their dreams. If the strike drags on, more people will fly out of Chennai pursuing their hobbies and chasing their dreams.