Khanna: In remake

Thiruvananthapuram, May 8: Malayalam filmmaker Vinayan had borrowed the idea from Gulliver’s Travels. Now, his army of Lilliputians ? all 300 of them ? have caught eyeballs in Hollywood.

A California-based production house has shown interest in the story rights of Vinayan’s film Atbhutha Dweep (Wonder Island) as well as its entire cast of midgets for a Hollywood venture.

The innovative filmmaker, who has scored a box-office hit by casting 300 midgets opposite well-endowed women in the film, told The Telegraph he was scheduled to meet a representative of the US company in Mumbai from May 18 to 20.

Some of the company’s representatives had watched the movie at Prasad Color Lab in Chennai and wanted Vinayan to lend them the story and send the little heroes over. But Vinayan said that could be a problem because the short men, signed up from across the country, suffered from various ailments.

?If the California venture comes through, it’ll be interesting since we often borrow from Hollywood,? said Vinayan, who has 24 films to his credit.

The filmmaker is planning a Hindi remake of Dweep under the banner of New India Films. It will have Akshaye Khanna and Sunil Dutt in the lead opposite Mumbai model Mallika Kapoor, the heroine of Dweep. In the Hindi version, the midget population will go up to 500.

Dweep, which has crossed 50 days at 22 centres out of the 30 where it was released in Kerala, is set on the wonder island of Vamanapuri, where the man-woman height dichotomy owes to a 1,000-year-old curse.

For the first half hour, the film explains life on the strange island. The real action begins as six Indian Navy personnel, who have survived a chopper crash, reach the kingdom.

Two of them are attacked with darts by the dwarf warriors who take any man of normal height for a demon who will take away their women and wealth. How the others escape the wrath of the midgets forms the rest of the story.

The film was shot mostly in Malampuzha, in the northern Palakkad district of Kerala, and the tourist hotspot of Goa.

During the first week, several theatres screening the film in Kerala witnessed booing and catcalls from men hired by superstars. They were trying to hoot down the film which had young actor Prithvi Raj in the lead as the naval officer, ignoring a ban imposed by the Association of Malayalam Movie Association on him.

Prithvi Raj had defied the association’s diktats during a tussle with producers.

Asked what prompted him to experiment with midgets, Vinayan said he wanted to lend respectability to dwarfs by depicting their agonies and ecstasies. ?They are a laughing stock wherever they go,? he said.

One of the dwarfs said at a talk show recently that any woman who takes his hand would have the advantage of carrying him along like a cellphone. For now, however, it’s Hollywood calling.