The movie which now has Vikram playing its lead character John/Joshua, was originally written for Suriya and the project went into production with AR Rahman as its musician. The movie even had a title-design release (very similar to the current title-card) and a pooja ceremony, but was shelved due to the highly publicized fall-out between the lead actor and the director. Creative differences in the script was said to be the reason for the fall-out back then. When this hiatus was long-forgotten, composer Harris Jayaraj (during one of his fan interactions) revealed that then-shelved Dhruva Natchathiram is looking at a revival with him as the musician and Jayam Ravi as the lead. However, the semi-announced project failed to take off due to budgetary constraints back then.