A lion-hearted effort which hit the bull's eye

Ajay Devgn, the action hero launched in 1991 was already a major star in Hindi cinema, counted among the top names in the industry. Nearly two decades after his debut, joining hands with the maverick director Rohit Shetty of the extreme slam bang action type, he had a release in 2011 titled 'Singham'.

A remake of the Tamil super-duper hit 'Singam' starring Suriya and Anushka Shetty, the action flick was lapped up for its slick pace, hyper stunts and punch dialogues which were the trademarks of mass movies in the 1980s and 1990s. The southern touch to the film was lent by Prakash Raj, whose villainous mannerisms were distinctly identifiable by his fans all over.

For the Tamil hero Suriya, it was his 25th film. It had taken him 13 years to touch the milestone, having begun his career in 1997 at the age of 22. Interestingly, his Hindi counterpart had by then nearly touched 100 films in his career, which had begun in 1991. For both, it enabled a showcasing of muscle, machismo and sheer power antics on the silver screen, lapped up excitedly by the fans.

Devi Sri Prasad, the famous Telugu music director scored the music for the film in which songs became popular, especially the one sung by Punjabi rap singer Baba Sehgal. The Hindi version had Amar-Mohile to lend a local ambience to the intensely Marathi environment in which the hero was shown and his dialogues greatly endeared him to the aamchi Mumbai crowd.

The Tamil film made tonnes of money with a budget of Rs 15 crore, raking in nearly Rs 90 crore for its producers. With the Hindi platform considerably bigger and global in dimension, the budget touched Rs 41 crore with the returns equally commensurate to the tune of Rs 1. 48 billion, a landmark film for Ajay Devgn and Rohit Shetty duo.

Based on this 'Singham' venture, the director went on to create a franchise picking up similar cop and robber action themes from Malayalam and Telugu in the years ahead, which saw Ranveer Singh playing 'Simmbaa' in 2018. With the fans wanting a time pass kind of a movie, the director continued to exploit the formula to great success with a few more in the pipeline like 'Sooryavanshi' starring Akshay Kumar awaiting release in the near future.