Mani Ratnam’s ambitious project Ponniyin Selvan is finally taking off. He is planning to adopt Ponniyin Selvan, a historical novel by Kalki Krishnamurthy, written in Tamil. The novel is in five volumes, or about 2400 pages and it tells the story of Arulmozhivarman, who later became the Chola king Rajaraja Chola I.

There have been several attempts to create film adaptations of Ponniyin Selvan. In 1958, MGR announced the project and he even did casting for several of the roles but later dropped the project for unstated reasons. In 2012, Maniratnam attempted to film a complete adaptation of the novel, but had to shelve the project due to budget issues.

Now Maniratnam again started working on this project. It was earlier rumoured that Maniratnam planning to rope in Vijay, Simbu and Vikram for the period project. But latest reports suggest that Vikram has been finalised for the film. It is known news that Maniratnam has earlier worked with Vikram in Tamil and Hindi versions of Raavanan (Villain in Telugu).

The makers are yet to officially announce the project.