‘Maranamass' director Sivaprasad: The film is told from an experimental, quirky perspective

The Hindu

19-05-2025

Maranamass is chaotically funny with its motley crew of characters and over-the-top exaggerated situations, co-written by debutant director Sivaprasad and actor Siju Sunny. The movie is cleverly written, witty and funny without once crossing the line into slapstick territory. Sivaprasad is known for his brand of quirky TVCs, especially the promo featuring actor Shakeela for the Netflix series, Sex Education. Headlined by Basil Joseph, and starring Suresh Krishna, Prashant Alexander, and Siju Sunny, the film recently dropped on SonyLiv. Here he talks about making the film, creating the characters and his plans.
How did the collaboration with Siju Sunny on the script happen?
We have known each other for a long time and we have worked together. We talk about stories and scripts, this one was born out of a core idea suggested by Siju. I liked the basic idea and felt that it could be developed into a one line for the script and a movie, of course.
What was the idea? Was it the serial killer thread?
No, not that. But what happens when a girl uses pepper spray against a man who harasses her in a bus and ends up killing him with it. We populated it with a bunch of 'characters' with their own back stories and created situations around them.
Were the lines and situations already in the script or were they improvised on the set? Some of the lines sound way too hilarious to be written beforehand.
Everything is in the script — the situations and the dialogues. But then the actors have improvised on the set, bringing in their individual flavour.
The casting is on point. Did you have an actor or actors in mind when you were scripting?
I cannot say we had a particular actor in mind; casting was not fixed initially. Rajesh Madhavan was the only actor who we had decided upon earlier. We explored our options and decided on the actors afterwards. I am very interested in the casting aspect, I did the casting for Minnal Murali; I was assistant director for the film. Casting actors is an interesting process for I believe if you get it [casting] right then half the work is done. The faces of the actors have to fit the characters, support it and if people can connect both then it is perfect. For example Babu Antony had to essay the character of Deputy Superintendent of Police, Ajay Ramachandran. Nobody else would have been able to pull it off, especially not a comedian. I have worked with Basil, Rajesh [Madhavan] is a friend and I have also worked with him.
Basil's look in the film is very different from what we have ever seen of him. How did that come about?
We worked on the look of all the characters, we wanted Basil's to be very different from how we have seen him. So it is a bit of Gen Z, cross references with other films etc…because the genre of the film is such that we wanted the look to have a caricature-like, over-the-top look which is different.
How did Tovino Thomas come into the picture, as a producer?
(Laughs) It was literally a 4am thought! Once the one line was ready, for some reason I thought of Tovino. He has a great sense of humour, for one. It was, perhaps, why I thought of him. I thought 'maybe he has plans to produce a film'. I texted him, he said he would get back to me…he liked what he read and he was in. Everything happened very quickly.
Did you expect this reaction to the film, which is different from what we usually see?
The film is told from an experimental perspective — as are the story and the treatment. But I was confident. My short films and ad films have been this kind — quirky characters and quirky situations — they have gained acceptance. Like the ad for Netflix [a sketch with actor Shakeela promoting the final season of the series Sex Education] which was very different, and it did well. So I was confident the film would work out.
This is done and dusted. What next?
The writing is on…I want to try as many different genres. Let's see…
Maranamass is streaming on SonyLiv